Government_Leadership-9

=**Leadership**=
 * Resolved: To Develop the Art and Science of Leadership**

The highest level of leadership happens when a great leader inspires others to become leaders themselves. Championship teams are created when leaders surround themselves with other leaders. Leaders in sports win by constantly developing and executing game plans. They use PDCA. They can't change the rules, but they can develop a better game plan than others. Life and the business world is almost the same except business leaders create the game and the rules then develop strategy based on customers' needs and competitors' strategies. A gameless organization that doesn't keep score focuses less on customers and the organization.

__Business, Scoreboards, and Game Plan__: Rules for the game can change like when Ford built the Model T. This changed the rules for even the best horse carriage makers. A modern example is Amazon.com, which sales books online and even has digital books available. Traditional book stores would have to adapt game plans if they wanted to compete. The only constant in business is customer satisfaction. Everyone must use core strengths. Like two successful football teams, one is a running team while the other a passing team. Each develops different game plans based on strengths, but both are successful. There are 6 steps for developing a game and scoreboard in any field: (1) define the game, (2) track the parameter, (3) educate the team on the parameters, (4) play and score the game, (5) check and study the score, (6) make adjustments in PDCA, then go back to the beginning and repeat the steps.

__Vision Commitment vs. Economic Dependence__: It's important to align culture to create current. Once the game is defined, the leader must create a culture to win the game. Great cultures demand great character-based leaders. Think of the current flow in a swimming pool. If the leader gets the whole team moving the same direction, the current all goes quicker without much more effort. It takes effort, though, to get started and moving. To develop an effective culture, all behaviors have to run the same direction in the pool. Purpose, vision, and core principles help align a culture so it will run in a certain directions in the pool.

A vision-led culture drives a community's behavior better than a bureaucratic-led culture ever will. Bureaucracies are contractual being paid for what's assigned. In a community with vision, exchange is voluntary. You give your labor for a chance to make a difference or exercise your talents. In a bureaucracy, you're a factor of production. In a community, you're a partner for a cause (vision). Championship teams are created when communities buy into a common vision formed around purposes and principles to accomplish that vision, surrendering their personal egos and replacing them with a team ego to accomplish the team's vision.

__Expecting and Inspecting__: Leadership is less about accomplishing tasks and more about the culture created and culture creates itself. Others raise their game, not by force, but by positive peer pressure of a unifying vision backed by trust in the leaders. Many tasks must be delegated to other leaders and team members who demand excellence from themselves. The mistake many leaders make is that they delegate both the assignment and the inspection of the scoreboard, which is a recipe for failure. Leaders should delegate the task, but keep the responsibility for inspection of the scoreboard in order to maintain the brutal reality of the scoreboard.

__Culture of Execution - Runners, Bobbers, and Obstructionists__: A poor culture means the pool current is flowing in the wrong direction. It can be reversed, but needs a united leadership team that jump in the pool against the negative current for a long period of time. Bobbers just hang in the pool, obstructionists go the wrong direction, while runners are needed for unity, trust, and to buy-in to the leadership team and the vision. To win in one's field, one must find and influence talented, disciplined people who will buy in to the culture created. A leader must get surrounded by the right people or be doomed to mediocrity. The fewer runners a leader has, the more the pool gets filled with bobbers and obstructionists.

__Leadership Culture and Freedom__: Most companies built their bureaucratic rules to manage the small percentage of wrong people, which in turn drives away the right people, which increases the percentage of wrong people, which increases the need for more bureaucratic rules to compensate for incompetence and lack of discipline. Companies that have less oppressive rules and allow freedom to win a defined game attracts more leaders. Leaders sail on tumultuous seas of change, seeking to win, while non-leaders coast on the calm seas of mediocrity looking to stay afloat. Sam Walton loved giving freedom, but it came with responsibility. He had two objectives in developing the culture of his teams through the scoreboard - praise and teaching. There is nothing wrong with correcting what is wrong, as long as it's in the positive voice.

__Trilateral Leadership Ledger and Sturgeon's Law__: Every leader must grow in character, tasks, and relationships. One can rate himself/herself on a scale from 1 to 10 in each category then multiply the three together - character x tasks x relationship. Theodore Sturgeon wrote that 90% of material in any area is crud. An example is Wikipedia - 10% come up with 90% of the information. Also, tens of thousands audition for American Idol, but 90% are rejected and 10% move on to compete. Sturgeon's law can be positive though. Anyone can be a leader if they work at it. The TLL formula helps. Sturgeon's law shows only 10% will excel at one of the three key areas. A top leader must excel at all three.

Walton became a billionaire less because of genius and more because he had the courage of his convictions. He butted heads with the Butler Brothers, the owners of his first retail store, Ben Franklin Five-and-Dime stores. The Butler Brothers' tight controls clashed with Walton's ability to serve his customers causing him to work around the rules and search for less expensive merchandise suppliers. Even though Butler Brothers was unhappy, they tolerated Walton's independence due to massive increases in sales each year. By his 5th year, he was the leading variety store owner in all of Arkansas.
 * Sam Walton - Leadership Excellence:**

Like many elite leaders, he suffered a severe business setback, one that would've been fatal to a lesser man's dream. There was a problem with the lease he had signed in 1945. Walton failed to ensure it had the standard rental renewal clause. The building's owner saw a chance to advance his son at Walton's expense. Walton had to sell what he had in the store. It seems that his storybook rise collapsed. He could have become bitter. However, as a leader, he chose to get better.

He had learned his lesson. He formed a trusted legal team to review future contracts. He didn't pass the buck, admitting full responsibility for signing the document. This is a character trait that separates leadership producers from leadership pretenders. Leaders refuse to play the victim card or pass the buck regardless of how alluring it is. He allowed the pains of a temporary setback to fuel the fire rather than quench it. Walton moved to Bentonville, Arkansas and opened Walton's Five-and-Dime changing its name even though he was still under Butler Brothers' umbrella. This would be an uphill battle since it was a small town that already had three variety stores.

Walton invested more than he had got from his old store. The gamble paid off. In less than six months, he tripled his sales showing his leadership formula worked wherever he tried it. He spread around the Southwest without anyone knowing anything about him from 1950 to 1962. The Butler Brothers played it safe, not changing their variety store model, as Walton was building new discount stores. Walton met with Butler Brothers in Chicago to offer a partnership. They refused and decided to stick with their model as they were blinded by the past and rejected a new reality. Variety stores didn't purchase volume at lower costs. However, Walton did and was able to lower his prices. Walton was also rejected by Herb Gibson, a successful discounter at the time in Texas.

Walton did what a revolutionary leader does. He proceeded with his plan anyway. His secret philosophy was a yearning to build a culture whose objective was building loyal customers. He created a leadership culture at Wal-Mart; a culture of humility. Walton's own humility was key. He expected his leaders to buy into the company's ego over individual ego. He created a whole culture that worked as a team and refused to lose.

Walton believed the customer was king and everything had to be geared toward satisfying the customer. Low prices, good quality, and courteous service were all necessary according to Walton. He always checked out his competition to learn something new. Wal-Mart's culture was held together, even after Walton's death, by a profit-sharing plan, which allowed partners to profit - if management is profiting, they'll treat associates better, and they'll treat the customers better. In 1962, K-Mart, Target, and Woolco also started. At the time, Walton was small with only 19 stores in Arkansas. He would grow bigger than all three and Woolco later folded.

What Sam Walton created was a leadership culture whose design was predicated on satisfying the customer as its reason for existence. The proof is how large Wal-Mart grew by the time of Walton's death. Walton's story is a message for all those concerned about America and the West - a story of dreams, struggles, and eventually, impressive victories.

__Thinking Questions__: 1. What is the difference between leadership and management? 2. With an understanding of what leadership is, you've learned that leadership is for everyone. How does this break the traditional thoughts about leadership? 3. Leaders need to create a positive, productive, leadership culture. Choose an area of your life and give an example of a positive, leadership culture that you have experienced. Or give an example of a culture that was the opposite. What were the effects of each on the people, the productivity, and how would you explain the experience overall? 4. One can't expect what he/she won't inspect. What do you think is meant by this? Explain. 5. Leaders must have the will to win. What does this mean? 6. What will you take away from this lesson and begin applying in your own life?

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