Posts tagged 'Strategies':

Do You Have the SPACE to Do it?

March 27, 2012

Posted by Thomas Despres in Blog, Thought Leadership with no comments

I’m often asked to give a plan of attack when taking on a new
assignment. While there have been
thousands of books written on the subject, successful leadership requires an
organized and thoughtful approach from the start. This approach can be concisely summarized in
an interview, but it takes up to a year to fully implement and ensure you’re on
the right track. I call it the make SPACE
approach.

Strategy: All organizations require a strategy so they
know where they’re going in the first place.
This includes a Vision, where the organization sees itself in the
future. It also includes a Mission, how
the organization intends to get there or its purpose for existing. The key components of speed, quality and cost
also come into play when putting together a strategic plan. The organization must decide in which of
these areas will it strive to be “best in class” and in which areas is it sufficient
to be competitive. Trying to be
everything to everyone can get a company in trouble, but failing at one of the
above to at least be competitive is also dangerous.

Process: Organizations need a “road map” for employees
to function over time. They must know
what they’re supposed to be doing and how they’re supposed to be doing it. This includes systems and processes that it
takes to complete basic functions such as payroll, billing and accounts payable
for example. And all company processes
need to be documented and employees must be doing what is documented. Early stage companies are naturally in a
state of “flux”, but they also must invest time in this part… even if it
changes frequently.

Accountability: The organization must establish measurable
and attainable goals for all to see and understand. Those goals must clearly tie back to the
Vision and Mission. More specifically, I’m
referring to an individual report card at all levels. When things go well, celebrate it and when
things don’t meet expectations, corrective actions must be taken. A company without this focus may have the
best and brightest employees, but if they’re all going in different directions,
they’ll have a much smaller chance of reaching the goals.

Continual Improvement: All that we do can be improved or refined in
some way over time. Without a continual
improvement approach to what the organization does, things will stagnate, people
will get bored and results will erode. I
would say that one percent of your team has to have this as their only goals –
process, product or service improvement.
Some would use the techniques such as Lean or Six Sigma to accomplish
this and that’s fine. It doesn’t matter
what you call it. What matters is that a
culture of continually evolving to meet and beat the expectations of the
customer, internal or external, is required to continue to grow. The most successful organizations have this
as component of their DNA.

Environment: Last, but not least… if your organization has
people in it, this may be the most important part of the plan. Good employees do well. Willing employees do great. And you’ll never know what the employees are capable
of until they are willing. The environment
it takes to succeed long term is an environment where people are a key
component of the equation. How does this
happen? I know it seems like I’m
oversimplifying, but ask them. That’s it.
Ok, you have to take some action on some of the things they have on
their mind. You also have to be mindful
of the highly effective interpersonal habits – these can be found in countless
places. They key to being successful in
this area is that you have to be willing to invest in them through building
trust, effectively listening, building a collaborative culture and respectfully
resolving conflict.

It’s as straightforward as can be, but you’d be surprised at the number of
organizations you’ve worked in that leave out key components. For sure, all of these areas require
investment, but I’ve seen organizations fail that left out just one of
them. Is there enough SPACE
in your schedule be successful?

How Does Leadership Happen?

March 19, 2012

Posted by Thomas Despres in Blog, Thought Leadership with no comments

Cindy McCauley from the Center for Creative Leadership hits the nail on the head
when we she answers the question “How does leadership happen?” She has a way of simplifying the concept leadership
and the attributes that are apparent when leadership is present. Without any of the three important outcomes
she speaks of below, leadership just ain’t gonna happen!

In some of my successful assignments in Latin America (Mexico and Puerto
Rico), I may not have realized it, but I was constantly trying to make things
happen. I realized that we needed
purpose, consistency and commitment to succeed.
Cindy puts another and, I’ll admit, more concise way. Read on and you’ll see what I mean.

The list of “what makes a good leader” is a long one. “It’s
as if we’ve taken every positive human quality and made it into a requirement
for effective leaders,” says Cindy McCauley.

“It’s time to step back and take a different approach,” McCauley
asserts in Making
Leadership Happen, a new CCL white paper.

Instead of focusing only on individual leaders and their capabilities, we
need to examine how the whole system is involved in making leadership happen.
We need to look at dynamics like the exchanges between managers and employees,
the interactions among team members, the quality of relationships throughout
the organization and the enactment of organizational processes.

How would you know if leadership is happening in a team, in a workgroup, on
a task force, or across the organization? Look for three important outcomes:
direction, alignment and commitment (DAC).

Direction is agreement on what the group is trying to achieve
together. Alignment is effective coordination and integration of the
different aspects of the work so that it fits together in service of the shared
direction. Commitment is when people are making the success of the
collective (not just their individual success) a personal priority.

“We think the only way to know if leadership has happened is to look
for the presence of these three outcomes,” McCauley explains.

So how do you, a manager, make leadership happen in your organization? Here
are three important strategies:

Pay attention to whether leadership is happening. Start
looking for evidence of DAC. By paying attention to outcomes, you will not only
begin to discern where more leadership is needed, but will also start to see
the kinds of processes and interactions that are producing the desired levels
of direction, alignment and commitment.

Make more leadership happen. First, when you notice that
there aren’t many leadership processes in place, create them. For example, do
you need to meet more regularly with your peers to prioritize work in a
matrixed organization (to create more alignment)?

Second, when there are useful leadership processes in place, make sure
people have the skills to participate in them effectively. When a new strategic
initiative is being launched, will your staff be able to take part in (not just
show up to) the town meetings the CEO is holding (to create more shared
direction)?

And finally, when existing leadership processes no longer seem to be
producing the needed direction, alignment and commitment, explore new ones.
Does a more diverse group of people need to be involved (to create more
direction)? Are more honest conversations about proposed changes needed (to
create more commitment)? Are clearer accountabilities needed (to create more
alignment)?

Improve your own ability to participate in the making of leadership.
Back to those long lists of leader capabilities. It is useful to continue to
deepen and broaden your individual skills and abilities. With a broader
repertoire of capabilities you’ll be able to participate more effectively in a
wide range of leadership processes. Often the difficult question is “Where
should I focus my development efforts?”

One lens for examining this question is DAC. If there was one place in your
organization where you would desperately like to see more DAC, where would that
be? Then what would you need to get better at so that more leadership happens
in that setting?

Finally, don’t undertake these three strategies alone! Talk to people about
where DAC is happening and where it’s not; enlist others in your experiments
with new leadership processes; seek input on how to improve your own
capabilities. Leadership is shared work – at the end of the day, you can only
make it happen with others.

INNOVATION SECRETS FOR EVERY EXECUTIVE

February 6, 2012

Posted by Thomas Despres in Blog, Thought Leadership with no comments

This book outline reminds me of the premise behind continual improvement. Continual improvement is the backdrop for
quality improvement and waste elimination techniques. We’ve heard them all – from Quality Circles
and Just in Time in the 80s to Total Quality Management and Total Productive
Maintenance in the 90s to Six Sigma and Lean Manufacturing in the last decade. The following book outlines the concept that
small discoveries may generate breakthroughs. To me, this describes continual
improvement. Take steps to marginally
improve things and those will lead to breakthroughs not previously thought of.

According to Peter Sims, author of Little
Bets: How Breakthrough Ideas Emerge from Small Discoveries,
there are two types of innovators: conceptual innovators who pursue bold new
ideas and often achieve their success early in life, and experimental
innovators who use slow, iterative, trial-and-error approaches that gradually
lead to breakthroughs. In Little Bets,
Sims illustrates the experimental process of innovation, accomplished through a
series of small bets.

The Growth Mindset

Success as an experimental innovator, Sims writes, depends on a
“growth” mindset, which sees failures and setbacks as learning
opportunities. People with a “fixed” mindset, in which skills,
abilities and intelligence are considered innate and present from the
beginning, are unable to accept and benefit from failures, since failure
challenges their self-worth. Growth mindset people, however, are not afraid to
fail, and are therefore constantly challenging themselves to innovate and
improve. Howard Schultz had a simple idea: bring the concept of the Italian
coffee house to the United States. However, his original shops — with their bow
tie wearing baristas (who hated the bow ties), menus written mostly in Italian
and non-stop opera music — were hardly well received. Learning from the chorus
of complaints from customers, Schultz slowly tweaked and changed his concept to
eventually create the ubiquitous Starbucks coffeeshop now present on nearly
every street corner.

The Affordable Loss
Principle

Innovators using the small bets approach, writes Sims, tend to operate under
the “affordable loss principle” — in other words, focusing on what
they can afford to lose rather than calculating expected gains. When first
purchased by Steve Jobs, for example, Pixar was at once a hardware business,
software business and a digitally animated TV advertising company. The future
of the company, it seemed to Jobs and others, was in the Pixar Image Computer
that helped people visualize complex images. Jobs dedicated only a small
fraction of his investment toward the digital animation section of the company,
but didn’t expect to ever see a return on that money. As Sims explains, had
Jobs based his decisions not on what he could afford to lose, but rather, as someone with
a different mindset might have done, on what he expected to gain from digital
animation, he might have shut down the group early on.

Sufiya and the
Professor

The story of Muhammad Yunus and the birth of micro-lending illustrates another
principle of experimental innovation: the importance of immersion. “One of
the best ways to identify creative insights and develop ideas is to throw out
the theory and experience things first-hand,” Sims writes. Yunus was an
economics professor in Bangladesh theorizing, he
told the author, “about sums in the millions of dollars.” Then he
started wandering through nearby villages and discovered craftspeople such as
Sufiya, all but enslaved to local middlemen because she could not afford 22
cents for bamboo. Outraged, Yunus lent her and others the miniscule sums they
needed, and the world-famous Grameen Bank was born.

Using examples from a variety of disciplines, from architecture to stand-up
comedy, Sims has provided a learned and entertaining how-to guide to
innovation.

Better Under Pressure!

January 30, 2012

Posted by Thomas Despres in Blog, Thought Leadership with no comments

I was told by a manager at Nortel
Networks in the 1980s that when times were tough, true character in leaders was
revealed. I couldn’t have agreed more…
especially in a politically charged climate for a company approaching $30
Billion in sales. That insight stayed
with me for assignments to follow and it paid off when I focused on being calm
during the storms. The stress of the
situation was always tough enough without adding my own “manufactured” stress
in the moment. The following book summary rings true for me and articulates advice for leaders who find themselves under constant pressure.

According to Justin Menkes, consultant for the executive search firm Spencer Stuart and
author of the best-seller Executive Intelligence, the best leaders are
those who have the ability to realize their potential and the potential of
those they lead — in other words, to perform to the best of their ability and
to get the best out of their people. In his new book, Better Under Pressure,
Menkes presents three specific “catalysts” for realizing potential:realistic
optimism, subservience to purpose and finding order in chaos.

How to Be Optimistic Without Losing Your Head

Realistic optimism is self-confidence without self-delusion or irrationality,
writes Menkes. People who have this trait are not afraid to attack audacious
goals, but are also fully realistic about the challenges and difficulties that
lay before them. To be realistically optimistic, Menkes explains, leaders must
have both “an awareness of actual circumstance” — the ability to see
the world as it is, both positive and negative — and a “sense of
agency” — the deep belief in one’s capabilities to change circumstances or
situations.

Menkes illustrates the ability to see the world as it is through the story of
“Randy,” an insurance company executive interviewed for the top
position at one of America’s leading insurers (Menkes disguised his name for the
sake of privacy). The interview took place soon after the collapse of AIG,
which was in large part due to the company’s involvement with high-risk credit
default swaps. Randy was intrigued by the credit default swaps, but remained
cautious. It seemed to him that there were serious risk issues that his
competitors did not seem to notice. As a result, according to Menkes, Randy set
up “a separate subsidiary unconnected to the rest of the corporation that
did a small trade in these products.” In retrospect, the move might seem
like genius, but for Randy it was simply of matter of “weighing risk and
reward,” Menkes writes. Randy was realistic about both the upside and
downside of credit default swaps. And he also had the humility to admit that he
wasn’t sure where this new market might go. His approach to credit default
swaps reflected realistic optimism — he was willing to give the new product a
try, but didn’t buy into the unsupported enthusiasm in which other companies
indulged, to their eventual regret.

Fighting Back

Subservience to purpose, the second of the three catalysts, means a total
dedication to a goal. “Leaders who demonstrate subservience to purpose put
a particular pursuit — such as their company’s mission — ahead of their own
comfort,” Menkes explains. “Quite simply, great leaders equate
progress toward this goal with emotional satisfaction. They are, ultimately,
servants to their company’s most noble purpose.”

The third catalyst for leaders is to find order in chaos, Menkes writes. This
is the unique ability to cut through multiple or multi-dimensional problems to
find the solutions and resolutions that others cannot see. Maintaining clear
thinking and having the drive to solve puzzles are the two key attributes in
leaders who are able to find order in chaos.

Menkes conducted in-depth interviews with 60 of the best CEOs in America and
draws on research of 200 other CEOs and leaders. The result is a clear
explanation of three core personality attributes that separate the leaders who
can face up to any challenge from the leaders who crumble or are weakened by
adversity. Better Under Pressure
is a valuable book for both experienced and emerging leaders.

A Revolution in Customer Service

January 23, 2012

Posted by Thomas Despres in Blog, Thought Leadership with no comments

Now here’s
a story of how to “wow” the customer.
Rarely as providers do we put ourselves in the shoes of our customers to
find ways to meet needs they’re not even aware of.

In The Amazement
Revolution, an engaging new book on customer service,
author Shep Hyken tells the story of a Web hosting company named Contegix that
proactively uncovered and prevented an impending disaster for a client while
the client itself was unaware of what was happening. One weekend, the Contegix
director of key accounts was monitoring social media mentions of all his
clients’ companies when he noticed a disturbing trend involving one of those
clients, an online ticket agency. A promotion had led to a tidal wave of demand
for free tickets that threatened to crash the client’s Web site. When efforts
to reach the client for a server upgrade authorization were unsuccessful, the
director of key accounts preemptively called in his engineers, who rushed to
install the additional servers that kept the client’s site functioning. On Monday, Contegix informed the client what had
happened during the weekend, and said that the client could pay for the new
servers or refuse them. Contegix also said the rush installation and
engineering over the weekend would be offered at no cost.

The Contegix story is one of the many case studies that exemplify what Hyken
calls “amazing” customer service — customer service that is
consistently and predictably above average. While a number of the ideas in The Amazement Revolution
may be familiar to readers of customer service books, Hyken (whose previous
book was the best-selling The
Cult of the Customer) offers a framework that translates the key
issues of customer service into seven actionable strategies, supported by more
than 100 specific takeaways (with typical flair, Hyken calls them ARTs or
Amazing Revolution Takeaways).

The Power of
Partnership and FUN

The Contegix case study is a powerful illustration of Hyken’s third strategy:
to cultivate a partnership
with customers that goes beyond the traditional ongoing service relationship.
The monitoring of the client’s social media mentions alone was beyond the duty
of a standard Web hosting arrangement. Most Web-hosting companies would not
even have learned of the problem until after the client itself noticed the
issue — which would have been that Monday morning
after the site had crashed over the weekend.

Another of Hyken’s seven strategies is for companies to “have serious
FUN.” The acronym stands for employees who are motivated in their
interactions with customers by a personal sense of Fulfillment and of being appreciated for
their Unique
needs and skill, and the anticipation of the Next
challenge.

As Hyken explains, if you engage your employees, they will engage your
customers. Hyken’s other strategies include:

Provide Membership: Treat the people served by a company as members with
an elite status rather than customers.

Hire Right: Hire the people whose personalities will best support the
customer service experience. The key is to hire for attitude first, then worry
about developing the right skills.

Create a Memorable After-Experience: Create a memorable, positive and
even unexpected experience for customers after they have done business with
you.

Build Community: Create a community of evangelists by listening to,
supporting and respecting your most loyal customers.

Walk the Walk: Make sure every employee at every level of the
organization consistently and without exception supports your commitment to
customer service.

Enthusiastic
Practicality

The cover of The Amazement Revolution
features a stylized rendering of fireworks, effectively underscoring the
celebration of great customer service in these pages. Some readers may see the
cover illustration as cheerleader pom poms, which would be equally appropriate
given the palpable energy and enthusiasm in this book.

The power of the book, however, goes beyond Hyken’s engaging vocabulary and
style. The detailed organization and structure of the book offers readers easy
access to scores of practical strategies, tactics and ideas, supported by 50
real-world examples.

Managers and employees don’t need sizzle, they need steak, and Hyken delivers.

Leading in the Public Eye

January 9, 2012

Posted by Thomas Despres in Blog, Thought Leadership with no comments

From news media to social media, every
organization, every leader, every decision is open to public scrutiny as never before.

Imagine if every time you named
employees to a team or task force or made a job assignment, you were blasted by
opinions and counter-opinions. Imagine if every decision had to be explained
(sometimes defended) to multiple constituencies. Also imagine if the measures
of success for you and your organization were moving targets. This is the reality for leaders of today.

How do successful leaders navigate
leading in the public context?

Look out for collateral damage. Don’t underestimate the consequences of your actions and
decisions. You must be thoughtful on a moment-by-moment basis. Ask yourself: Am
I really clear about this situation or decision? Do I need more data, more
input, more time? What if I get this wrong? Do I need to change my
decision-making processes?

While taking more time slows you
down on the front end, it may save you hours or weeks of time and resources in
dealing with the fallout of a preventable problem. Of course, there is always an element of risk
and uncertainty. If you get a decision right for person A, you automatically
get it wrong for person B, and person C is unhappy either way. You need to
learn to live in this reality.

Learn to span boundaries. Leaders must interact with many people and meet the
wide-ranging needs of numerous constituencies. Even in the context of a single company,
a leader is responsible to a huge number of communities that span geographic,
cultural, language, socioeconomic and educational boundaries — as well as ages,
interests and values. Be empathetic when
interacting with anyone about anything.
It seems to be broad, but is critical in this day and age of social media.

Consider your legacy. Leaders are often in
a specific position for just a few years. While they personally move on, the
best leaders leave their employees more energized, more capable and
well-prepared to come back and lead tomorrow, next month, next year. A leader’s
job is to buffer the employees from anything that pulls their focus off of
results, and to invest in them for the future.
As a business leader, what are you doing to ensure your people are
focused on what matters most — for now and for the long-term health of your
organization?

Consider how successful leaders
navigate the challenges that the “public eye” present. Doing so will ensure you’re spending time on
the things that count the most.

The Small Things

November 21, 2011

Posted by Thomas Despres in Blog, Thought Leadership with no comments

While working for Nortel Networks in Raleigh, North Carolina, I hired a retiring
Colonel from the Air Force. His message
about leadership was simple. “Do the
small things well when it comes to connecting with your team and you’ll go far”,
Colonel Larry Hinton used to say. Colonel
Hinton wrote in Air Force journals often.
My favorite was an article he wrote called Leading from the Soul. In
it, he stresses the simplicity of doing small things well. Take birthdays for example. That day is very important to the person
celebrating it, but only marginally important to others… unless they’re family
members or close friends of course.
Colonel Hinton was a Wing Commander with more than 15,000 people on his
team. He’d still take the time every day
to personally sign birthday cards and deliver them to the place of work for
each employee. This took him about 30
minutes per day, but he realized over time that this was the one thing he did
that made the biggest difference to his team and helped build their support of
the mission.

To this day, I owe much to Colonel Hinton with respect to importance of doing the
small things for those that you depend on to get the work done. I did the same thing with birthday cards in
Mexico and Puerto Rico. And I have to say
that something this simple was a big reason for many of the successes I
enjoyed. This practice was mentioned countless
times on employee surveys as one of the key factors people enjoyed about working
in my factories.

So take the time to find ways to connect with your people. The birthday card is but one example. As a leader, it will be the small things you
do well that will make the biggest difference.
In a future post, I’ll bring this point home with more examples of ways
you connect.

Play the Game

November 7, 2011

Posted by Thomas Despres in Blog, Thought Leadership with no comments

As we grow older, we are taught that games are distractions, a playful break from serious
activities. Thirty-something consultant Aaron Dignan, part of a generation that
has been raised on constantly changing games and gadgets, disagrees. In Game Frame:
Using Games as a Strategy for Success, Dignan
persuasively argues that games can lead the way to success, achievement and
fulfillment in business and in life.

This book reminds me of a situation I faced while planning to build a new factory in
Monterrey, Mexico in the late 90s, I recall the advice of the Senior Manager of
Manufacturing. “Land is inexpensive”, he
said. “So we should build a soccer field
and a barbeque pit as well as a pavilion for outdoor parties”. At first, I couldn’t believe it would make
much of a difference. I later realized
that taking these steps would be a major factor in attracting and obtaining the
workers needed to meet our goals. It was
one of the reasons that employee turnover was less than 9% yearly in our
factory when most maquiladora operations faced more than 30%. I learned that playing, in a way, is inseparable
from work and completely agree with the assertions in Dignan’s book. Well, it’s not just about what employees do
outside of the pace of the manufacturing floor.
Dignan also touches on a methodology to make work more interesting.

Rather than being time-wasters, Dignan writes, games can offer opportunities to
resolve two basic issues that undermine our efforts to achieve: lack of
volition (I don’t want to do it) and lack of faculty (I don’t know how to do
it).

With lack of volition, people are unmotivated, disinterested and disconnected,
Dignan writes. They don’t see the value in an activity or behavior. They refuse
to become involved. Games address lack of volition because they are designed to
engage people, to interest them, and to offer the promise of fun and
excitement. Games also offer autonomy and control, Dignan notes. When you play
a game, you are in charge. What happens depends on you. Fun, control, autonomy
— these are the types of elements that engage and motivate people.

Games also put us in a learning mode, Dignan writes. When you first play a
game, you are not very good. You make mistakes. The more you play the game, the
better you become. Eventually, you master the game and are ready to move on to
the next level.

How Grokking Leads to Flow

Dignan quotes game designer Raph Koster, who uses the term “grok”
when talking about the game learning process. “To grok something,”
Dignan explains, “means to understand it so thoroughly that it becomes a
part of you.” Grokking applies to the workplace, too. For example, a
cashier who has been on the job for five years probably knows everything there
is to know about the job. The problem is that once you’ve grokked something,
you become bored. There is no more learning or discovery involved.

In his seminal book, Flow,
author and professor Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi illuminates why games are so
attractive, Dignan writes. Csikszentmihalyi shows that people are most
effective and happy when they have the exact right level of skills to meet the
challenges they face. If they don’t have enough skills, they will be anxious.
If their skill level is above the challenge, they will be bored. To progress in
an activity, people need to have challenges that are just beyond the level of
their skills and abilities. They will be motivated to grow just a bit to enjoy
the perfect balance of skill and challenge, which gives them a feeling of
exhilaration and achievement. Games, notes Dignan, “provide us with what
we crave: a set of escalating challenges, feedback on our progress and the
thrill of victory.”

Designing Games

In 10 chapters (called levels, an echo of the learning process of a game),
Dignan explores the multifaceted implications of games in today’s society.
Topics include the rise of interactive technology, the misunderstood concept of
play and the future of games. In one chapter, Dignan shows readers how to
design behavioral games for success based on 10 building blocks, among them:
objectives, skills, resistance (the opposing force that creates tension in the
game), resources, actions, feedback (some kind of response to the action taken)
and outcomes.

Game Frame is a unique and insightful read. Dignan not only successfully advocates on
behalf of games, he offers his readers an actionable tool for designing games
that readers will want to use for the next major challenge that they face.

What Matters Most: Leadership Lessons from Maj. Gen. “Burn” Loeffke

September 14, 2011

Posted by Thomas Despres in Blog, Thought Leadership with no comments

While I wouldn’t
pretend to have worked a career and lived a life that compares to Major General
Loeffke, I will say that many of the lessons I learned while on international assignment
in Mexico and Puerto Rico serve me to this day.
From laughing to serving to being humble, his lessons in his life’s work
are similar to those I experienced when working alongside some of the most
capable and driven people on the planet – Latin Americans. Upon reading this, I just had to share it!

Major General Bernard “Burn” Loeffke likes to say that he goes into any
situation armed with two weapons: the FIRO-B^® and the MBTI^®.
For the uninitiated, the two are personality assessments that can give leaders
great insight into how to work effectively with others.

Burn Loeffke discovered his most powerful leadership weapons when, as a young
General, he attended a CCL program. During a recent visit back to CCL’s campus
in Greensboro, NC, he said he carries CCL lessons with him
every day — and relies on the Fundamental Interpersonal Relations
Orientation-Behavior and the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator.

“Perceptions and emotions matter,” says Gen. Loeffke. “We can’t solve the rational
part of a problem until we deal with the emotional.”

Both the FIRO-B and the MBTI help people to understand their leadership style and
preferences and to consider the different needs and perspectives of others.
According to the general, the insights from these tools allowed him to better
understand his own colleagues — and his competitors.

Three-and-a-half combat tours, rapid promotions and deep love for his fellow soldiers marked
Gen. Loeffke’s early career. Later, as a diplomat in uniform, he served inMoscow during the Cold War and as a defense attaché inChina.

When he retired from the military in 1992, Gen. Loeffke pursued several passions,
including leadership development. He returned to CCL as Visiting Fellow in
1993-94. He later earned a medical degree that allows him to practice and teach
preventative medicine. He now travels the world on medical missions. He writes;
teaches at medical universities; and fosters partnerships, friendships and
connections across cultures. Recently, the general was invited to teach
leadership fundamentals to 1,000 future leaders inChina.

In all he does, Gen. Loeffke draws on the insights he learned at CCL – and shares
some of his own:

Seek and share health, music and laughter. A sense of humor, a dedication to fitness and a love of
music have sustained the General personally. He’s also found that a desire for
better health, music and laughter are common to any place, any culture.
Everyone wants to be healthier and anyone can be a healer, he says. Music gives
energy and singing brings people together. And nobody wants to be around glum
people, so find humor and laugh more often.

Help others. The needs are great. Much of the world is a disaster. The challenges facing nations
and individuals in the next decades are extraordinary. In your work and through
your life, make a commitment to helping others.

Gen. Loeffke adds that science has proven what he has long known: Helping others is
good for you. An antibody called SIgA increases — boosting your immunity — as
you do things to help other people. “If you do things to help others, you
are healthier,” he says.

Be humble. Gen. Loeffke is a decorated military officer, distinguished statesman, humanitarian
and scholar. Impressive on paper; inspiring in person; and incredibly humble.

As a new medical officer serving on a medical mission in a remote combat zone in Sudan, he
wasn’t able to rely on his past success and training. When his supervising
physician fell ill and was suddenly sent home, Gen. Loeffke was the only
trained medical professional in the area, working with two local men who
assisted in the makeshift clinic.

“We were seeing 120 wounded a day, and I had to take over surgery,” he
recalled. One assistant offered to help; the general gratefully accepted.
“This man cannot read or write, and is uneducated by Western medical
standards. But he knew what to do; he did the surgery. He taught me how to do
internal sutures,” says Gen. Loeffke. “I learned humility inSudan.”

I’d say that Gen. Loeffke is a true role model in how to live the life of a leader. His experience is unique. His appreciation for what it takes to get
things done against all odds is admirable.
His willingness to give back distinguishes him. Above all, in my opinion, his ability to
connect with those around him is the key to his success.

Strategy (part two of two)

July 5, 2011

Posted by Thomas Despres in Blog, Thought Leadership with no comments

In part one last week, I mentioned strategic thinking, acting and influencing. This week I want to emphasize that setting strategy is not an event followed by implementation. It is a learning process that includes five elements:

Assess where you are. What’s the competitive climate facing your organization? Are you clear-eyed about your internal situation? Do you regularly and realistically assess your organizational strengths and weaknesses?
Know who you are and where you want to go. Strategic leaders need to understand the spoken and unspoken culture of the organization and its leadership. Imagine the company 10 or 20 years into the future — then look at the distance and direction you must travel to succeed.
Learn how to get there. Business strategy should be based on an understanding of key strategic drivers: the relatively few but critical determinants of long-term success. Read more »

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What Matters Most: Leadership Lessons from Maj. Gen. “Burn” Loeffke

Strategy (part two of two)

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