How You Can Take the Lead in Leadership
” The longer the backstory, the worse the deal”
Mark Cuban, Entrepreneur
If you can’t explain it,
If it’s too hard to put into words or
If it takes 30 minutes to blurt out your value proposition,
Chances are your ideas are undeveloped and
Being told no, maybe one of the nicest things someone else can do for you.
Brevity and clarity remain the surest test of well-reasoned ideas.
Case in point: My Bass Handbook of Leadership (the definitive leadership guide) is over 1,500 pages and my strategy book is over 1,200.
It’s not because leadership and strategy are complex (although they can be), it is because we simply haven’t developed a clear understanding of what we mean when we use the terms.
Many people and organizations spend too much time and too much money (an estimated $150 billion per year) to develop leadership skills and most organizations do not have a clear definition of leadership against which to measure and control one’s developmental progress.
IDEAS IN ACTION: TAKE THE LEAD IN LEADERSHIP
Bring a cross section of folks from your organization together to define your organizational ideal of leadership by asking the question:
“What does leadership mean to THIS organization?”
If you snickered at the last suggestion because you don’t think you could pull it off…
Or you don’t think your organization would be interested…
Why not try to create a definition yourself and then ‘shop’ your idea around internally to see if others agree?
Either way, you’ll end up with a definition of leadership based on the specific needs of your organization and that’s probably a lot better model to focus on than the one you have now!
“I wrote you a long letter.
If I had time, I would have written you a short letter.”
While attributed to everyone from Mark Twain to Winston Churchill, the essential idea works within all your business dealings… develop a CLEAR point of view and share it in as few words as possible…
Until next week, this is Jeff Kaplan saying, “Stay Connected“….
-Jeff
