Are You A 9-1-1 Leader Or A Manager?
9-1-1 Leadership. How do you know if you are a leader or a manager? Certainly if you Google this topic you will get a laundry list of different articles or answers. There are many well known spiritual leaders who have written numerous books on leadership; my favorite being Bill Hybels. I would like to take an approach that comes from personal work experience as well as a biblical example. I have never heard it explained the way I will attempt to in this blog. I like to call this the 9-1-1 approach to leadership. The “9” stands for the 90% that is working correctly in your organization day in and day out. Let’s face it, not everything is broken on a daily basis. If you are a positive person it is easy for you to identify the areas that are hitting on all cylinders. The first “1” stands for the 10% that is not going well and is causing you headaches. Some organizations recognize the 10%, while others do not even know the 10% exist. And the last “1” stand for the up to 10 times longer it will take to identify, fix and change the behavior behind the 10% not going well.
So back to the initial question, how do you know if you are a leader or a manager? In my opinion, if you focus and spend a majority of your time on the 90% that is going well…then I would call you a manager. However, if you spend most of your time and energy in the 10% area that is not going well…I would call you a leader. Managers keep the organization rolling and steering the ship on a day to day basis. They are there to “manage” what processes/policies already exist within the organization. They quickly identify situations that start to slip or get out of whack with what is the norm. Managers have typically been handed a proven solution and told to carry on the way it was designed.
Managing Organizational Momentum
Momentum definition: force or speed of movement; impetus, as of a physical object or course of events.
How do you maintain momentum within your organization once the ball starts to roll? I have tackled this very question in several positions I have had in the past. In reality momentum requires serious effort to get something moving but once it is moving it is harder to get it to stop then to keep moving. One way to keep momentum going is to have constantly greater goals. Below I have outline four additional areas that I have found beneficial to watch in order maintain organizational momentum.
Velocity
“If we weren’t still hiring great people and pushing ahead at full speed, it would be easy to fall behind and become a mediocre company.”
- Bill Gates
First, at minimum your organization needs to maintain the velocity in which the organization is currently operating, and most likely increase it due to competition from your competitors. Velocity is defined as: the rate of speed with which something happens. To continue the momentum, that you worked so hard to create, you have to continue to operate, change and recreate yourself at the minimum rate of speed in which it took to produce the current momentum. History is littered with organizations that were once industry leaders that no longer exist because they failed to change or reinvent themselves to maintain the momentum.
“The world is changing very fast. Big will not beat small anymore. It will be the fast beating the slow.”
—Rupert Murdoch
One Mistake
As quoted by Peg Wood, “Commitment is the ignitor of momentum.” Just like a sports competition, one play can swing the momentum over to the other team and create a dramatically different outcome. Your organization is Read more
Managing Expectations
As a leader, it is one of my responsibilities to set goals and expectations for the team. I know individual workers have goals for themselves personally, professionally and spiritually. However, just like a coach of a sporting team, it is my responsibility in the corporate environment to set goals for my staff (the team), often hoping to accomplish far beyond what many of them think may be possible. There are so many expectations and disappointments when goals go unmet. There are usually three areas that we have unmet expectations: the people around us, our current situation and the uncertain future in front of us. We build up expectations in each of these areas on how we think things should go and are often disappointed when they do not go the way we thought. We need to learn to manage our expectations as well as honor God in the process no matter what. Managing expectations is a critical factor in leading successful change. If you can manage your expectations, you may have a more enjoyable experience with the people around you, the situation you are in or the future ahead of you.
“Expectations need to be managed from the beginning, and throughout the process–which requires a major effort of public information and education … Otherwise expectations are unrealistic, and [people] are inevitably disappointed. When disillusion sets in,… people can easily turn against the … agreement they had at first welcomed.”
–Kofi Annan, Secretary General, United Nations, 14 October 2004.
Whoever I am with, wherever I am, regardless of the uncertainties that lie ahead, I will live to honor God.
Preparation, Vital to Opportunity
In our year end staff meeting I quickly touched on some introspective points we as people need to focus on to make us better as a distance learning team. These characteristics can also be used to make us better husbands, wives, sons, daughters or ministry workers etc. The specific characteristic I touched on in the meeting was “prepare for opportunity before it comes”. What you do today really does effect what happens tomorrow. I could continue this and spin it into why we should prepare so we are better as an organization, but instead I want to take that principle and spin it so you grasp for other areas of your life other than just work. God really does have a plan for your life, but He also expects us to prepare for the time when He is ready to move within us. If we are lazy, complacent or disobedient to what He is refining us for, He will not be able to move you into that opportunity that He has waiting. Consider Noah, he had to build an ark that took between 80 and 120 years of preparation before God could move and fulfill His plan in Noah’s life. Read more
-
Page Views Since January 2008
-
