Tapping the Value Proposition
Today’s young, bright professionals can bring diverse generational points of view to decision-making in business and industry, especially in relation to change dynamics. Too few companies realize that today, too few bosses listen, and as a result companies flounder in the quickly changing global marketplace. Real leaders must look for and listen to what each different generation brings to the workplace table.
Younger generations are often poles apart from older executives in how they approach problems, how they engage in critical thinking, and how they process challenges. Real leaders recognize the differences as positive—as opposed to confrontational—and, in turn, work those different attitudes and approaches into their business and marketing strategies. Because of this, their companies can gain rapid strategic advantages over their competitors.
New generations may not know a specific business, but they understand their generation, what they want, and how they want it. When teamed with the right older mentors, these younger workers can help create a winning team for the business today and for the future.
Listening to Talent
The world of design is fraught with firms who, though successful as artists, rarely possess business acumen. However, Corbin Design, an environmental graphic design firm located in Traverse City, Michigan, has been both, and its leadership’s willingness to pay attention to changing markets and marketplace dynamics has paid off. In its 35-year history, Corbin Design has successfully worked in residential and restoration architecture, interior design, and marketing communications, and now specialize in “wayfinding,” which is the art of guiding people through complex environments such as medical centers, academic campuses, and cities through signage and other architectural or visual cues. Throughout the firm’s trajectory, its leaders have regularly encountered talented designers who grasped participatory roles in the development of the firm, its design process, and client base. Some of that talent succeeded, and some didn’t. Corbin Design President Mark VanderKlipp began as a designer, helped build the company to its current status, and, in the process, redefined wayfinding design and put the company miles ahead of its competitors.
As the healthcare industry has transitioned from provider-centered care to patient-centered care, wayfinding has grown in importance in medical facilities. Designers and project managers provide consultative services that focus on the design of healthcare facilities and processes that are more directed toward patients and families. Often, it isn’t until wayfinding is discussed as part of a new, proposed building design that it becomes apparent that the location of various services should be changed to better serve the customer. VanderKlipp espouses the idea that “what we do best should make it easier for the next person to do what they do best.”11 In doing so, they change the culture of these organizations while improving access to care.
The Millennial Advantage
Today’s Millennials bring different skill sets to the workplace than did previous generations. The reality is that every transformational generation brings its own skill set to the workplace and faces resistance, and when real leaders rise up, change occurs.
What are the positive traits of today’s Millennials, and what effect can they have on the workplace? How can you help harness their skills? What can you as a leader do to ensure these younger employees emerge as successful leaders for tomorrow? Why, you may ask, should you bother? The passion, energy, commitment, and creativity that Millennials bring to their work, not to mention their technological savvy, will transform and improve the global marketplace. Leaders who learn how to harness these powerful skills gain an edge on their competition as a result.
Leadership in Tomorrow’s Workplace
Growing global marketplaces, evolving technologies, and changing workspaces are major challenges facing tomorrow’s leaders. How can a real leader inspire his or her employees if those employees and staff are spread across the city, the state, the country, or even the world? A geographically dispersed workforce already is a reality for many companies, large and small, that have traded their brick-and-mortar office structures for virtual space. Real leaders, though, learn to cope with these new aspects of diversity and manage their companies to excel, in part, by capitalizing on the latest technologies and tools available. They have learned that’s essential to remaining competitive.
Leading a remote workforce takes more thought and planning from a communications standpoint. But when done right, a leader becomes more conscious of employees’ needs. Out of sight, or off-site, does not mean out of mind.
Big Advantages and Challenges
The Internet age has brought with it many advantages for companies and their leaders who embrace change. The advantages range from lower business expenses to increased flexibility and freedom for employees, and, in many instances, greater creativity and productivity from those employees, too.
However, employees spread across miles and oceans away may not feel connected to or a part of a company. That is where real leaders make the difference. It is inherent in the job of a leader with a geographically diverse workforce to make the effort to meet face-to-face with those employees on a regular basis. Video-conferencing, interactive webinars, and other tools are great for interim communications. But even the most up-to-date technological links cannot replace the personal connection that comes with actual face time. Sitting down with the troops—wherever they are—also can provide a clearer picture of what is really happening in the company and the marketplace. As employee interaction becomes increasingly electronic and distant, companies and their leaders may also have to play bigger and stronger roles as social and community leaders in order to motivate, inspire, and drive the corporate culture.
Blaise Simqu travels the globe—from California to London to Singapore—to keep connected with his company’s employees. He is CEO of Sage Publications, an international publisher of journals, books, and e-material for academic, educational, and professional markets. Simqu makes sure the people in his organization—no matter where they are—are heard, involved, and trained to make his company more innovative and to move it forward.
The Hay study cited earlier points to the “flattening” of leadership roles and the increase in team projects—smaller, disparate groups all working toward a primary goal. A positive outgrowth of this team approach is that it may be easier for team members—inherently smaller groups as opposed to an entire workforce—to have actual face time, especially as workforces become more geographically dispersed.
Embracing Change
Despite those demands of the changing workplace, the basics for sustained superior performance fundamentally remain the same. Howdy Holmes of Chelsea Milling wasn’t afraid to stand up to past traditions and transform his company from a powerhouse of the past into one of the future. He did so by embracing the past in terms of value to customers and employees, the importance of his employees, and the strength of integrity and character he learned, in part, from his father.
Real leadership implies change—that is, change that moves the organization forward in strategic ways to achieve its overarching goals. Not unlike the promise a brand makes to its constituencies, effective leadership forecasts that needed change will occur and that it will improve the organization’s fortunes. It is not enough, however, simply to supply a new vision or new order of things. Real leaders also must help others to grasp change, identify with it, and use it creatively, constructively, and passionately. It must be clear enough to be easily understood but ambiguous enough to stand the test of time and adapt to evolving conditions.
Real leaders must embrace the need for change and their changing roles with it. That means:
Risking what has become tradition in order to maintain company strengths.
Developing new policies that balance core traditions with rapidly evolving marketplaces.
Embracing experimentation and intelligent risk-taking.
Embracing diversity and finding new ways to touch new
audiences.
Listening to the marketplace en route to finding the right place.
Making It Work Today
In today’s global, 24/7 economy, leaders must learn to connect with their employees, on-site and off, in different, and often more visible, ways. As with Simqu of Sage Publications, a CEO or team leader must spend more time visiting with employees in far-off places. That means meeting in large, as well as small, groups, and then eliciting and listening to ideas, suggested improvements, and concerns. A “suggestion box” isn’t enough, either. Real leaders make time for real communication.
It is essential that a leader fully understand the needs of his or her people in order to maximize success on the job. Unlike his or her traditional in-house counterpart, a geographically distant leader does not have the opportunity for daily, in-person observations to make sure everything runs smoothly. Staff must have the right work environment with the right equipment to do the job. That includes the latest possible technological tools that make it easier to stay connected. In addition, leaders of a disparate workforce shoulder the inherent responsibility of making very sure that employees and middle managers—in-house or remote—clearly understand stated goals, strategies, expectations, and assignments.
The Human Side
The best leaders also genuinely connect with employees by showing their human side. Leadership, after all, is about relationships with others, and those relationships are essential to promote workplace culture and strengthen trust, which, in turn, increases productivity. Real leaders pay attention to employees’ human needs, too.
Other important aspects of leading successfully in today’s evolving workspaces include:
Adapting to differing demands or varied meetings that cross time zones. For example, one meeting may be an important special event celebrating a team’s recent success, and the next meeting might be a very challenging encounter with investors, both involving participants across different time zones.
Maintaining what Simqu refers to as “calendar integrity”—doing what you say you’ll do when you say you’ll do it. Too many CEOs scratch meetings with employees at the last minute because the previous meeting ran longer than expected. That kind of disregard can quickly erode employee trust, because it conveys the strong message the employee is less important to the leader than other audiences.
Drafting your major messages yourself instead of turning the responsibility over to speechwriters or assistants. Once the message is established, at least in the form of ideas and a first draft, it may then be appropriate to hand it off to an expert or assistant to finalize.
Ensuring human resource staff are effective communicators and know how to work with employees off-site and on. Too many HR types don’t know the difference and often are ineffective in working with employees off-site, especially when it comes to technology. IT staff need to be effective communicators, too, when remote or off-site workers are involved.
Being tech-savvy. Real leaders today—young, old, and in between—must learn to capitalize on all the communication means they have available, including social media such Twitter and Facebook, texting, Skype, and other teleconferencing methods. Leaders must take advantage of all this to stay in touch with employees, markets, communities, and key constituencies. As part of that, it is also essential to know the preferred forms of communication for immediate staff.
Ensuring that both remote and in-house employees receive the training they need to utilize these new technologies.
Being sure communications expectations and standards are clear and set up front. Don’t leave response times to chance. Make certain everyone is on the same page as to how he or she is required to communicate with the home office and the leader, how often, and what feedback is required.
Leadership Lessons From the Marines
When we think of the military, we often imagine camouflage-clad soldiers on patrol amid the dust of Iraq or Afghanistan, rolling across the desert in caravans of Humvees. Hollywood movie images of military leadership are often overly macho and violent, and oversimplify the leadership principles that are practiced throughout the military’s complex missions around the world.
Crucial Ideals
Hollywood overlooks the core tenets of leadership in the Corps—truisms very much at home and a must to emulate in the corporate battlefields of today’s global marketplace. Business leaders, like the Marines, must be adaptive, take risks, operate frugally, demonstrate courage of conviction, discipline, and inspire employees. For good reason, the University of Pennsylvania’s prestigious Wharton School integrates the Marines’ leadership lessons into its management curriculum. Wharton’s MBA students visit Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia to listen, observe, actively participate in, and experience a special “boot camp,” and learn from real leaders.
For nearly two years I worked almost daily with Marines. Here are six of the Marines’ most important leadership crucibles that high-performance organizations and real leaders must emulate:
1. Consistently deliver results. Display an unshakable “can do” attitude and relentless passion to exceed the goal.
2. Live out the mottos “Lead, follow, or get out of the way” and “Never quit.”
3. Exhibit an enduring service culture characterized by acting above one’s own interests; a fiercely proud tradition of honor, discipline, and humility; and a promise never to leave anyone behind.
4. Assume a state of constant readiness. This demands remarkable adaptiveness and perseverance, a trained flexibility to overcome any obstacle, and the ability to do more with fewer resources than others.
5. Provide leadership that is consistent, transparent, and reaches toward a higher standard for the organization. The leader should “carry the torch” and serve as a paragon of inspiration to the troops.
6. Live out the motto to “be no better friend,” unafraid of admitting shortcomings and always committed to making it right.
Retired USMC Maj. Gen. Leslie M. Palm, former president and CEO of Marine Corps Association & Foundation, and former director for Marine Corps Staff, Headquarters Marine Corps, Washington, D.C., is a prime example of a real leader whose dedication to the Marine leadership crucibles has inspired others around him for many years. Palm is a decorated combat veteran of the Vietnam War and Operations Desert Storm and Desert Shield. Despite his accomplishments, he is humble, modest, thoughtful, and steady. He is the same person today in terms of his values and strength of character that he was 50 years ago as a high school student in Marysville, California. Les Palm and I have been friends since boyhood; we grew up a block apart in California. Les was our high school student body president and an excellent athlete. He went on to play football for the University of Oregon. Even in those early years he had that unique sense of team and the ability to remain calm under pressure. During our summers in college, Les would spend a few weeks with the U.S. Marines as part of their Platoon Leaders Class, where he began to show an increasing sense of self-confidence, but never arrogance. Anyone who knew him knew he would succeed at anything he did.
Courageous Conviction
Real leaders manifest courage of conviction in their willingness to stand up for their ideals, their employees, and their company and products. Discipline and conviction like Palm’s is an expectation that permeates the Marine Corps. It is also a requirement for leadership success in today’s workplace. Taking any business into unchartered waters—as with leading a force into combat—is not for the meek; neither is competing with fierce competitors with stronger brands or launching new products in a crowded market.
Retired U.S. Marine Gen. Anthony C. “Tony” Zinni is another leader who understands the importance of having the courage and audacity to speak out when something is wrong. Among his many accomplishments, Zinni is a former commander in chief of the U.S. Central Command at the Pentagon, a past U.S. Peace Envoy to the Middle East, Special Envoy to the Henri Dunant Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue (Indonesia, Philippines, and Sudan peace effor
ts), and chairman of the board of the multi-billion-dollar conglomerate BAE Systems, Inc.
As Gen. Zinni has exemplified throughout his decorated and honored career, audacity, courage, and boldness are essential traits for a real leader. The general is his own man, candid and anything but an ideologue. He was pointedly blunt in criticizing President George W. Bush’s national security team for their lack of post-war planning and for failing to fully understand Iraqi society. As an astute leadership expert, Zinni believes the old definitions of leadership must be changed.
Leaders must be willing to speak out when the situation calls for change—whether internally in a business, or externally, relating to the community and beyond. That doesn’t mean leaders are resident critics. Instead, they carefully and thoughtfully choose the right time and place to speak out when something is not right. Leaders must be prepared for criticism and threats of disloyalty, too. But they must meanwhile stay the course, remaining true to their ideals, employees, and businesses even when confronted with criticism.
Bosses Can Become Leaders
As reflected in the outstanding actions of the individuals you have just read about, real leadership can and does bring about change. Real leadership is not always the fastest and shortest route, but it’s definitely the most long-lasting and successful. Bosses can be transformed into leaders; like almost anyone else, they, too, can learn the right way to lead. A shift in attitude is the first step—from a domineering boss to a consensus-building leader.
If you strive to be a leader and not a boss, remember and subscribe to these values and practices:
Commit to driving fear out of your organization.
Drive out other negative attitudes that undermine performance and morale.
Strengthen your corporate culture with discipline and compassion.
Believe in and build up your people.
Give clear assignments.
Be available when needed.
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