Next Level Blog

Jim Collins’ Top 10 To-Do’s for Leaders

This is the last of three posts that I’m writing based on some great presentations I heard at the Inc. 500 conference in Washington, DC last week. The primary keynoter for the conference was leadership guru Jim Collins, the author of Good to Great and the new book, How The Mighty Fall. I had never heard Collins speak before and when I found out he was going to be speaking in my hometown zone, I signed up for the conference.  It was the right decision. Jim Collins is a fantastic speaker. He offers incredibly rich and though provoking content delivered with the passion and energy of a world class evangelist.  If you get a chance to hear him speak, take it. You won’t be sorry.

In the meantime, I thought I’d share with you the top 10 to-do’s for leaders that he offered at the end of his two hour segment.  (These are paraphrased based on my notes.) It’s unlikely that all ten will resonate with you, but my guess is that you (like me) will find at least two or three that hit home.  Here they are:

Jet Blue Founder’s Advice for Leaders: Have Your Cry and Keep Going

This week I’ll be sharing some insights I picked up at the recent Inc. 500 conference in Washington, DC.  Today's comes from Jet Blue’s founding CEO, David Neeleman who was one of several terrific speakers at the conference.

Lots of people in the United States are familiar with Jet Blue and have experienced the energetic service, seat back TV’s and Terra Blue potato chips that the airline is known for. What may not be as familiar is the story of Jet Blue’s founder David Neeleman and that he is now involved in starting his fourth airline. The first was Morris Air which was a regional carrier that began as a travel agency. In his Inc. presentation, Neeleman told the story of being approached by Herb Kelleher, the legendary CEO of Southwest Airlines, and being asked if he wanted to sell his company to Southwest. Neeleman idolized Kelleher and told the audience that he would have sold Morris to Southwest for a lot less than he did to get the chance to work with Kelleher.  Neeleman hit the ground running at Southwest and started pushing big changes on a number of fronts.  Five months after getting there, Kelleher took Neeleman to lunch at a Ruth’s Chris Steak House in Dallas and told him he was fired because he was just too impetuous. Neeleman told us he cried after that conversation.

Leaders, Are You Thinking Big Enough? Zipcar’s CEO Has a Challenge for You.

I’m taking some time to feed the mind this week by attending the Inc. 500 conference taking place in Washington, DC.  There have been some notable speakers on the agenda including Good to Great author Jim Collins and Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh. The most thought provoking speaker I’ve heard so far is the CEO of Zipcar Scott Griffith.

By now, you’ve probably heard of Zipcar, the car sharing service that is sprouting up in metro areas around the U.S. and the world. (Maybe you’re a Zipster yourself.) Backed up with some great technology, the Zipcar model is pretty simple. You join the program for a modest annual fee.  When you need a car you reserve one online or on the phone. You walk to your car’s reserved parking space and unlock it using your Zipcard.  You drive away for a low hourly fee which includes your gas and insurance coverage. When you’re done, you park the car in its spot, lock it up and walk away.

Before you conclude that this post is an ad for Zipcar, let me explain what really rocked me about Griffith’s presentation.

Leadership and Changing Your Mind

In the early morning on September 8, I woke up and couldn’t get back to sleep. I read a little bit of news and among the stories were a number on the presidential elections in Afghanistan and the early indications of widespread voting fraud. The other main story around Afghanistan that evening was the appointment of General McChrystal as the new U.S. Commander. He was named to come up with and implement a  new plan. I’ll blame it on the semi-conscious state of being up in the middle of the night, but after my reading, I logged onto Twitter and posted the following haiku:

New team and new plan.
Wish them luck. They'll need it since
Karzai stole the votes.

As reported in the New York Times this week, President Obama is now considering a change in the plan for Afghanistan that he committed to six months ago.  According to the Times’ report, a worsening situation on the ground, the fiasco of the Afghan elections and a dire assessment of the future from General McChrystal have prompted a series of debates among Obama, the vice president, the secretaries of State and Defense, the national security advisor and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs on what to do next. The options being discussed range from a significant increase in troops to a reduction in forces.  Along with the debate on options comes a debate on whether the objective of the mission is nation building, controlling Al Qaeda, some combination of the two or something in between.

My point in this post is not to rehash the headlines but to consider  the process of how a leader changes his or her mind on a very visible and important decision. It’s pretty much guaranteed that no matter what Obama eventually decides to do he will be loudly criticized for the decision from one quarter or another. It’s tough to go back on a high stakes decision even if the situation has changed so much that the original objectives are no longer in play. That’s probably what the economist John Kenneth Galbraith had in mind when he said “In the choice between changing one’s mind and proving there's no need to do so, most people get busy on the proof.”

What about you? When have you had to reverse a major decision? What process did you go through in evaluating whether or not to change course? If you were advising Obama, what questions, factors or criteria would you encourage him to consider as he considers a change in direction?

Five Tips for Living with a Big Leadership Footprint

Have you ever felt like you were being watched? I’m not trying to induce panicked paranoia here, but if you’re a leader you should be feeling that way. The more senior a leader you are, the more you’re being watched. You need to pick up what I call a big footprint view of your role because, as a leader, your actions have a much bigger impact than you may realize.

That’s a lesson that Linda Hudson learned when she became a business unit president at General Dynamics back in the 1990’s. Hudson, who is now the president of the land and armaments group at BAE Systems, described her first few days as a BU president at General Dynamics in a “Corner Office” Q&A in Sunday’s New York Times. Wanting to make a good impression in her new role, Hudson picked up some new suits at Nordstrom’s and, as part of her ensemble, learned some interesting ways to tie a scarf to complement her suits. She showed up as president on day one looking really sharp. The surprise came on day two when, as she described to the Times, she ran “into no fewer than a dozen women in the organization who have on scarves tied exactly like mine.”

When you’re the leader, people take their cues from you. When you’re aware of it, this can work for everyone’s benefit. If you aren’t aware of your footprint or ignore its impact, you can quickly set yourself and the organization up for failure.

So, with your leadership success in mind, here are five tips for how to successfully live with a big leadership footprint: