Leaders in Organizations

 

Case One

 

Quoting the experience of a leader in a Communication Company

 

In 1998 I joined this communication company, the first company other than a traditional phone company to offer Digital Subscriber Lines for high-speed Internet access. After less than 30 days on the job, I saw that our sales strategy was wrong. We would never get the necessary reach or volume with a direct sales force; we needed multiple channels and partners. About 40 people, in a company of less than 200 at the time, were affected by this change. My opening act was to say that 20 percent of the workforce had the wrong skills for the job, and by the way, and the company's current strategy was doomed.

 

• The only way a leader wins support for those kinds of decisions is to make the business case, to respect people and the organization, and to slowly build trust.

 

• No boss can do that without strong leadership in the management team and throughout the organization.

 

• We build trust, and develop other leaders, by talking honestly. Every other month our senior team takes one or two days to examine our strategy, our effectiveness as a team, and own growth as leaders. These are difficult sessions.

 

• We try to get as brutally honest as we can with each other. There is nothing I like about those sessions. I put myself front and center to get facilitated feedback on how I'm doing as a leader - what works, what doesn't work.

 

• This opens lines of communication; it discourages political agendas. Eventually it brings clarity about the way we operate.

 

• We gain rich perspective on our business and ourselves because we are a diverse team in every sense - thought leadership, culture, religion, race, and gender.