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Lessons in Leadership

I have lost count of the number of books I have read on leadership since I began my first management role at 18 years of age.  Even if I didn’t exaggerate (which I can be prone to do when recounting numbers) it would have to be more than 30+ books read on leadership alone!

Being the eldest of four children and as school captain, you learn before you leave school at the very minimum how to communicate clearly and how to organize others. Yet once in the workforce and being quickly promoted into management, I did look to see if I could find a book that would  help me “how to lead people of the opposite sex who are so much older than you”(clearly I was much younger then), and “how to lead people who are likely to be so much smarter than you”(clearly I was much…er….simpler then) and then later looked for books as to “how to lead people through significant change even though they are really comfy where they are today”…(well I still read on this subject)!  

However, as I am sure many of you may have found from reading these types of books, most of the great leadership books provide great reinforcement of the things you either know intrinsically or are already practicing or that you see in other great leaders.  

Hopefully the reason you are in a leadership position is because you have already earned it through demonstrating your success, earned through the support and power of your team behind you.

I have found the greatest value in reading books about leadership, is the time that is spent reflecting on how well I really live the things that are being suggested. I read on with the hope to find those few “aha” moments that bring great clarity to how I might be feeling about my own style of leadership or that of others.  Reading can help reset your view of priorities by helping you step out of the day-to-day and getting back to doing the most important thing of all as a leader, and that is to develop the team around you to be their best, so you can collectively deliver on the goals.

Often in reading these leadership books, I have found the more complex the theory (and clever the title), the less practical it feels when it comes to professional development through daily practice.  And often it is just a clever re-spin on the same basic principles of leadership.

So given that often the best lessons are those you reflect on as part of your own analysis of your behaviour, and the fact that I have been asked numerous times to write on this subject, I have chosen to write first and foremost on what I see as the most basic Lessons in Leadership. 

It is pretty easy to follow – and yes it is intended to be as simple to practice and deliver the results, as it sounds:

Listen,  Look,  Learn,  Live,  Love  so  you  can  Lead !

lessons-in-leadership1

Listen

  • Listen to your team members – you will get more clues as to what is required from your own people then from anywhere else – new ideas, new technologies or developments, things that are competing for attention that may be distracting from priorities, needs, etc.  By engaging your team you are helping individuals feel valued and that they can influence the business.
  • Listen around you – talk on a regular basis to others, ask questions, look for common threads and themes in what is being said both internally and externally
  • Listen to your customers and partners (actively listen) – they will help you develop new ideas, technologies, developments, opportunities as well as provide greater clarification of their pain and priorities as well.  Even if you choose not to deliver what they are specifically asking for, see this as an opportunity for education, or a way to understand the problem so you can solve that not necessarily the symptom. And don’t forget to include listening to who you want your customer to be – what is it that they want?
  • Listen to your instinct (and learn to trust it)
  • Listen to yourself think so you can synthesize all of the above – focus not on exactly what is being said, but more what is all this information is telling you.  Listening is not enough if you don’t take the time to think it through! 

Look

  • Look for smart, talented people and build a great team – assume the job is finding people where it is all about what can you learn from them.  One measure on your people is if you can give them the goals or “the what” and let them focus on “the how” to deliver them, and they do!  If you can’t do that, then you may not have the right people in the job.
  • Look to understand and see the strengths of your team.  Help others to see the strengths of all the team players.  And ensure you play to these strengths on a day to day basis and in important game plays.
  • Look at your team members’ body language (look to see how they are feeling) and care enough to address anything you see – happiness, satisfaction, frustration, fear, stress etc. 
  • Look at competitors, your market, and other markets, anything that has achieved “breakthrough” or has broken through your defences and taken you by surprise. Spend time trying to analyse why it achieved breakthrough.
  • Look to geopolitical and global trends.  We often need a reminder to lift our head from the transactional and get into the macro to really find what is happening in the world and how that may impact positively or negatively your business.  Spend time thinking about how you can harness the global trends and differences in markets that you can see.  Build the discipline to look beyond the playground you are in on a regular basis. 

Learn

  • Be on a constant learning path, never ever fall into the trap you have all the information you need to know already, be prepared always to learn something new
  • Learn from others – what they do and what they do not do – not just what they say or choose to share
  • Learn from others – what can they teach you – not just from what you observe as per previous point, but what can be shared through active engagement.  If you want to learn something, then ASK!
  • Learn through reading, talking, listening, observing – as much from external as internal (have others learn and share about key areas they love – how can you encourage others to self-educate, learn and share?   If a topic is exposed to them in something that they already enjoy or an area they already show love and passion in – then allow them to go for it and encourage them to share or teach others including you!).
  • Actively research, look for and stay open to new ideas and thoughts, trends in other industries and across the globe.  Put aside what you are doing today to think about what you would do if you had a blank slate and could start from scratch.
  • Learn from mistakes (yours and others)
  • Learn from successes
  • Share your learning!

 Live

  • Live your vision – talk, share, act, demonstrate, live, breathe what the company is working towards.
  • The message you “live” should include defining the game you are in, explain how you the company needs to play the game, what you are working to achieve, how will it help make things better (for the world, the company, for customers, for employees, for shareholders).  Why it matters!  Any why it matters to you and why it should matter to them!
  • Live for now (don’t avoid anything)!
  • Live your values – never, ever, compromise your values. Talk about them and regularly assess (and have others assess) how well you are really living them
  • Live your life (keep it in balance – no one else will do this for you)
  • Live your passion – what it is that gives you energy, how is this aligned or is what you do every day
  • Share your loves, your lessons, your aspirations (not just share yours – encourage and provide the forums for the sharing of others) 

Love

  • Love the people you work with, help them be the best they can be
  • Love what you do today
  • Love what you can do tomorrow – energize yourself and others by revisiting your vision, aspirations and goals
  • Love your life!
  • And if at any time you don’t love what you are doing then change the aspects you don’t like and do more of the things you do like! 

If you can adopt these simple leadership rules, you will achieve amazing things, and you will be able to Lead.  Not just manage.  Not have others follow just because of a title.  Not because you demand it.  But because people will choose to follow you.  People will follow because they will see they can be better people, because they can see a path for success, because they can see how they can impact on the world, because they have confidence they will be recognized and loved for who they are and what they offer.

If you can Listen, Look, Learn, Live, and Love, then you will automatically be Leading.  You will find yourself subconsciously:

  • Leading by example
  • Leading by sharing, growing and engaging
  • Leading through strong communication
  • Leading through empowerment and acknowledging others
  • Leading because you will have a great record of team achievement!

There is no permission or need to have a defined management role to be able to practice these simple leadership rules.  And leadership is simple; you just have to want to do it. 

As Mahatma Gandhi said in one of my favourite quotes:

“Be the change you want to see in the world”

 

 

 

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Acknowledging the past greats and encouraging the next generation of inventors

Another great article by Kevin Morris.  For those not familiar with Kevin, he is editor of FPGA Journal (amongst a range of other technical publications) and he writes of the US 2009 Inventors Hall of Fame.  Read his latest article at http://www.fpgajournal.com/articles_2009/20090505_giants.htm

Inspires thought on what the world would be without those that push us forward.

We do have a responsibility to acknowledge greatness. The heros that selflessly push us into new territory, creating something new that did not exist before. Interesting that we then spend so much time in the incremental improvements after such significant milestone breakthroughs.

I do concur with Carver Mead. We need to do more to encourage the next generation of inventors, and to help ignite R&D investment and creativity. We need to fill the heads of children with the wonder of what can be, to see their study today as the means to impact positively on the world tomorrow.

Reminds me of a favorite quote of mine: “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.” by George Bernard Shaw.

As a footnote to teaching the next generation, we also need to teach bloody mindedness and resilience as a requirement in delivering breakthrough!

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Innovation is the only means for sustainable differentiation

Further from my earlier view, it seems to me that there is much debate and self-rationalization about where innovation is and where it will remain, with some expectation that it won’t change in the near future.  This view is just out-right dangerous.  The world is in rapid change, and we are seeing major changes when it comes to investment in R&D.

Please read my post to BusinessWeek:

http://www.businessweek.com/debateroom/archives/2009/04/innovation.html

Emma Lo Russo

April 21, 2009 07:43 AM

Interesting this debate has a certain degree of fixation on “western innovation.” That somehow it is “more innovative” than other regions’ innovation, especially innovation emanating from “the east.”

Yet the recent data (much of it factually from the US) tells a different story: Innovation is shifting. By any measure, China, India, and other countries are investing more in R&D, are exporting more high-technology goods, and are selling more to internal markets. Most significantly, they seem more enthusiastic about accelerating these effects, and moving into new areas.

Here are some examples from my desktop. According to the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, in its report called The Atlantic Century: Benchmarking EU and US Innovation and Competitiveness, China has changed its innovation ranking score by 19.5 over the past 10 years (the highest margin) and tops the ITIF’s table for change, while the US has changed its score by 2.7, and is at bottom.

Elsewhere, the WTO reports that China’s electronic exports grew 173 times in the 17 years to 2007. The US grew four times. The proportion of total exports from hi-tech goods also grew in China. The US, albeit with a much larger proportion, halved.

OECD countries awarded 6.7 million degrees in 2004. China awarded 2.1 million–one-third of all the OECD countries combined. And again, according to the OECD, China was only 15th on the world patents list in 2005, but grew patents by 35% that year. The US grew by 3%

So the argument is not that innovation is region-specific, but instead that acknowledgement is required that the world and innovation leadership is changing. Where design is created, what designs are being done, who it is done by, how it is done, even where designs are being manufactured, is all under a massive period of change.

It’s re-skilling over and over again, combined with innovation, that should set the agenda for future success, rather than dwelling on past and potentially fading glories.

This is what is happening in countries such as China. China is no longer about so-called cheap labor. Nations such as China, in many cases under national policies, are investing in innovation and re-skilling en masse. In electronics design, the industry in which Altium operates, the appetite for technical training and new development software runs unabated. Altium, as one example, is growing sales in China three times faster than other regions. And the desire is stronger about looking to the future rather then in rationalizing past decisions or investment. Whilst it is easy to argue that there is nothing to rationalize if payment of the tools they were using was not there in the first place, we should look to see how liberating that can be when it comes to evaluating what is required to lead and the willingness to leapfrog yesterday’s design paradigms. When I visit and meet with customers, universities, and partners in China, the desire to be ahead of the rest of the world, along with considerable self-belief, and commitment to investing in world-leading tools and practices are obvious.

Our future, as individuals, as companies and as nations, is in our own hands. Governments should focus on investments for companies that focus on technology innovation and in re-skilling people and organizations over and over again. Individuals should clamor for these new skills, preferably building on those they have already.

Let’s not hide from the challenge and the opportunity to do things differently. We will continue to seek great new products that are connected and smart. Someone, somewhere, will make the products we want to use or own, and at a price that we are prepared to pay, and for the quality we expect for that price. These are all “ands,” rather than choices to trade off, and in truth become the price of entry if you want to compete.

As to who will lead in various sectors, it will be down to us as individuals, and us as individual companies. The US has had a history of leading the world in innovation and electronic products, to assume it’s always going to be that way without changing its view of the world, what will be required, where competitors will be, and where the markets will be, will be required. Focusing on what makes us special requires real discipline of approach around true differentiation, being first to market, being cheapest, having historical leadership–none of these will do and thinking so will be a big mistake.

Innovation is the only means for sustainable differentiation.

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Turning organization values into organization valuables

Values need to be more then words we aspire to…we must live them and hold ourselves (and others) to account…

Much has been written about the downfall of the financial markets and many of the leading institutions who are paying the price for over extending on high-risk portfolios. 

Even those who have survived relatively unscathed, and those who remain propped up by government support, must ask themselves how they plan to deal with the next 12-18 months. 

It seems to me that there are two fundamental learning lessons from these recent times that we need to revisit as part of rebuilding the greater organization culture:

1)  Revisiting what we mean by organization values

This requires an urgent and hard look at what this means in relation to core values such as honesty, transparency, respect, responsibility, duty of care, balancing risk and return, and what are the non-negotiable points and measures. 

Organization values need to be more than empty words on paper. 

Values must be lived.  They need to move from ticking the box of “we have organization values” and instead move to be seen and be protected as “organization valuables”. 

You know your values are living when:

  • they are discussed regularly in meetings not as a separate topic, but within every topic
  • senior management are being measured and called out if they are not acting in harmony with the values (employees and managers are encouraged to ask and call this out), and 
  •  when every decision is understood and explained in relation to how it represents the business values. 

A good measure would be if every employee understands the decisions being made in relation to where it sits within the balance of investor returns against customer, community and employee responsibilities.

Values need to be shared and explored in every stage of recruitment, decision making, promotions, and in explaining any changes the organization is making.

The other lesson needs to be around industry regulation:

2)  Industry regulation needs to be overhauled

We need to change our model from having those who regulate the industry who previously have mostly been made up of those within the industry, to those representing the greater business, customer, government and investor community.  We need to move from a secular-type model to a representative-democracy of the greater stakeholders.

It is too easy to corrupt decision making when the regulators are also those who are likely to be influenced by the decisions, either positively or negatively. 

Whilst representatives from all groups are required to provide a good forum of interested parties, it needs to be strongly balanced out by those who represent the greater beneficiaries and of those likely to suffer the on-consequences of any decision.

With increasing pressures on short term results, the pull will be significant to overlook both these aspects in the immediate.  If values can be made omnipresent, not only will it be representative of strong organizational character but become a valuable platform of strong characters (employees) to leverage from.

The challenge for all organization leaders will be how to balance long term progress against short term and to never be tempted to accept or deliver anything if it comes at the expense of organization values or the greater stakeholders.

Emma Lo Russo

Published: April 13, 2009

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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“Our innovation is not superior to theirs”

The following  article was published in China Business News daily (CBN Daily).

china-business-news-daily-10-april-2009

 

Here is the story in English:

“Our innovation is not superior to theirs”

A fixation seems to be appearing in the worldwide debate about jobs, survival, leadership, technical excellence, and perhaps most markedly, innovation.

 It’s a fixation that, somehow, “western innovation” is “more innovative” than other regional innovation, especially innovation emanating from “the east”.

 In this era of global trade, global travel and global connectivity, this somehow seems foolish at best.

 Time and again, data is presented from that perspective. What’s ironic, though, is that even if we view those data from a western seat, and even if the data are presented through western filters (even inadvertently), and even if those data are read by western eyes, the data still say the same thing: innovation is shifting.

 By any measure, China, India, and other countries are investing more in R&D, are exporting more high-technology goods and are selling more to internal markets. Most significantly, they seem more enthusiastic about either accelerating these effects, or moving into new areas.

One example is a new report from America’s Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, called The Atlantic Century: Benchmarking EU and US Innovation and Competitiveness. Even as the report states that the US is not the innovation leader it thought it was, it goes on to say, “Many nations that get much of the attention as competitors in the innovation economy… including fast-developing Brazil, Russia, India and China… actually score at the bottom of the rankings… The main attraction of these nations remains their low costs, not their innovative infrastructures, and this situation will remain likely for many years, at least until they raise productivity in a wide range of sectors.”

 Yet China has changed its ranking score by 19.5 over the past 10 years, and is top of the ITIF’s table for change, while the US has changed its score by 2.7, and is bottom.

 Elsewhere, the WTO reports that China’s electronic exports grew 173 times in the 17 years to 2007. The US grew four times. The proportion of total exports from hi-tech goods also grew in China. The US, albeit with a much larger proportion, halved.

So something is changing.

In Australia, the closure of its factories by Pacific Brands triggered the predictable, sorrowful outcry about Australian jobs, with just a hint of how shocking it is that these jobs are going ‘somewhere overseas’, meaning China. Yet many of these workers had been at Pacific Brands for 30 or 40 years, doing essentially the same jobs, certainly with essentially the same skills.

It’s re-skilling over and over again, combined with innovation, whether it’s in electronics design or clothing, that should set the agenda for managing the current economic downturn, and preparing to the future.

This is what is happening in countries such as China.

It is no longer about so-called cheap labour. These nations, in many cases under national policies, are re-skilling en masse. In electronics design, the industry in which Altium operates, the appetite for technical training and new development software runs unabated. Altium, as one example, is growing sales in China three times faster than overall. When we visit and meet with customers, universities and partners, the desire to be ahead of the rest of the world, along with considerable self-belief, are obvious.

Our future, as individuals, as companies and as nations, is in our own hands. Governments should focus on investments for companies that re-skill over and over again, that reinvent themselves over and over again. Individuals should clamour for these new skills, preferably building on those they have already.

But let’s not blame others. We will continue to buy underwear, cars, fridges and mobile phones. We might do so in fewer numbers in the next 12-18 months. But someone, somewhere, will make products we want to use or own, at a price that we are prepared to pay, for the quality we expect for that price. As to who this is, is down to us.

Published: Friday April 10, 2009

About the publication:

The China Business News Daily is considered the most influential daily business newspaper published nationwide. CBN Daily is 100% focused on the key issues and current affairs that have significant impact on the macro economy and the business world. The newspaper provides information and insights for business leaders and affluent professionals across China.

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IP in China: less about intellectual property, more about infinite possibilities

Emma shares her views that the protection of intellectual property (IP) should no longer be seen as a primary issue in China. Chinese businesses, supported by the government, are seeking out and are willing to pay for the best in the market to create economic leadership for the long-term.  It is time for Australia and the rest of the world to really see the infinite possibilities that China represents – and it’s time to see the value in competing with piracy, rather than wasting time policing piracy.

Read the full press release:

http://www.altium.com/files/corp/media/pdfs/20090330-IP-in-China-less-about-intellectual-property-more-about-infinite-possibilities.pdf

March 30, 2009