How to choose Leader?

How to choose Leader?

How to choose Leader?

There is no formula for leader’s personality or style.

They come in all styles and personalities.

Significant contribution of leaders is towards others who are together for common goal.

To choose leader, see people around. See who is bringing change. These people may only be reactive to situation before they start bringing change. Pick these cherries.

One who is loud, on the pro act mostly need not be the real leader. People often mix personality type with leader’s role at a times. Leader in action will fulfill all acts as and when needed.

Single test of leader is see how he has done transforming from where he has come from.

Leader is like serial entrepreneur, from one transformation he moves to another, because he can’t live in with adjustments made to his and everyone’s life while being together.

Leaders show up. They are natural to come out and lead.

They are not designation to fill in.

So forget that you have new CEO or a President recruited to lead.

CEO or any other position has only greater influence and authority than the rest involved.

Person in the role may not be having any great leadership.

Will the person bring transformation for better or just doing something and trying something?

On other hand consider a junior designation may have been filled by a leader.

It is only the time that this talent will show up when people with him need to get rid of something or say achieve something.

Good leader will change things. He will change situation directly or change the people that changes the situation.

Leader can be visible or not, he may be directly acting or the people acting under influence of the new perspective.

People often make mistakes in evaluating a leader.

Popularity is wrong method to evaluate leader.

Matching type or complementing personality type also a wrong way to evaluate a leader.

Only test is, did leader made the transformation happen?

How by overcoming constraints, how he worked upon people, how did he utilized situational opportunities, how did he made people to achieve common goal, how did he setup and utilized internal dependency, how he worked upon limitations, how he made opportunity out of hopeless situation… every leader will do this.

Do you know someone who brings change in the situation he is in for everyone involved?

People may have favorable style or type for their Leader, but they are wrong to keep such criteria.

Do you need leader? Exactly why? What is to be changed? Why can’t you bring that change?

Everyone is leader at their level of capacity. OR situation is different that you may not be effective as you are hardwired in a certain ways as everyone else is. So it is OK to recruit a leader. This very act shows bringing change through your act.

“Leader Leads Change”, do not confuse to “Leader Leads People”. That’s why leader may not be visible upfront sometimes.

Challenge is keeping your good performers

Challenge is keeping your good performers

Challenge is keeping your good performers

Good performers are addicted to good work

Good work is like LSD to good performers

Creating this LSD every day is important

Being able to contribute, having authority to make decisions, opportunity to learn awesome new things, experimenting, taking risks, dealing with complexity, handling changes, fitting exceptions with rules, facing challenges and achieving things with limited resources by working with constraints is very addictive to young minds.

I have repeatedly seen people choose challenging work over pay benefits

People stay back with organization longer for interesting work

Moment the joy in the work is gone, LSD has exhausted, people leave

Money no doubt has magnetic power, but it depends.

It is easy to lose good performers if there is nothing interesting left in their plate

People do choose significantly higher pay but inside they still keep hunger for good work

Also people have moved away from good pay if there is not so good work when money is not that important then

Once you get better pay benefits, it is difficult to come back for lesser

“Difficult” has its limitations.

Great companies focus on “guaranteed performance”.

Some great companies recruit overly capable person than challenge he has to deal, for a safety

They will put layers of guards through heavy process and audits.

This reduces risk, and generates predictable, measurable, controllable… performance

Heavy process is defense against error and human factor

This is good design for repeatable performance of same or similar things

But the heavy system does not goes well with youth who is inspired to achieve

Things are simple, why make so cumbersome with process and system.

Working on one of its kind of achievements of the time is different story.

It is not a repeatable thing yet.

Some great companies have managed to setup correct work culture where challenges drive people. Google, LinkedIN, Facebook… I believe these are the companies have drastically different work ecosystem than traditional.

How do people achieve things as being just humans is more important.

It is important than spending on a heavy defense budget for trying to make things independent of human factor.

I prefer to choose people. Depends on what kind of problem to solve. Sometimes other.

Still in both cases good people are needed. Framework to support people is needed in both. Investing in people works better.

It is difficult to keeping good performers once LSD is gone

Keeping good performers requires solving this interesting problem called “making things interesting”. And this is LSD.