Twelve Leaderhip
Keys for Winning in FastTime®
by Leland A. Russell

What is winning? Is it being awarded a Gold Medal at the Olympic Games or a Nobel Prize? Becoming a millionaire? Having a great family life? Making the honor role? Learning to walk again after a serious accident? Leading a happy, fulfilled life?

The Leadership In FastTime® definition of "winning" encompasses all of the above. Winning is setting out to do something and succeeding in doing it. Below are Twelve Leadership Keys that will keep you and your organization on a smart track to Execution success and greatly increase your likelihood of Winning In FastTime®.  

Leadership Key #1:  Think Like an Architect, Not like a Bricklayer

An architect thinks in top-down fashion—beginning with a grand concept of what the building should look like, and eventually dealing with the nitty-gritty of window size and placement, where the air conditioning system will be located, where the electrical outlets will be, how plumbing pipes will run.

In organizations, top-down thinking is a necessity, if for no other reason than bottom-up thinking is impossibly slow and inefficient because of the nearly infinite number of facts or bits of data on any given subject.

A true bottom-up approach would require careful examination of every fact directly or indirectly related to the problem.  To gather and examine an infinite number of facts requires infinity of time, something we are not likely to have available any time soon.

So people take shortcuts, grabbing a few facts that are lying on the table or are otherwise easily available. With a tiny fraction of the facts relevant to the situation, they attempt to integrate up to large answers. Senior managers, intuitively understanding that not enough facts were used to give the integration process a reasonable probability of being correct, try to ease their concern by asking for more facts—which of course their subordinates dutifully set out to accomplish. The result: more time spent and little chance that additional bits of data will really improve what was a flawed process from the start.

Top-down thinking, in contrast, relies on an architectural, deductive approach.  In this case, we start off with a broad understanding of the system in which we’re operating, then differentiate down to find the small number of facts that are relevant to the problem.

More specifically, we start with an understanding of the pattern of the system, and then we look for matches or mismatches. Human beings are extraordinarily effective with pattern recognition, so finding matches and mismatches rapidly leads to data and answers that are good enough to suit the need. (Conversely, we’re terrible about looking at quantities of raw data in order to find meaning, which is why we like to convert large spreadsheets into graphical representations.)

Leadership Key #2:  Act Quickly on “Good Enough” Plans

 “Audacious ignorance hath done the job while timorous wisdom stands debating.” This axiom is as valid today as it was when written centuries ago. Create a plan that is "good enough," and execute it now. Improve as you move.

Many people have a problem with this. They loathe taking action until they are absolutely sure they haven't overlooked anything. Like engineers, they are susceptible to the urge to get one more data point in order to know with certainty the slope of a curve. The problem, of course, is that there is always an infinite amount of information available. And the longer you plan, the more your information grows stale and needs to be updated.

While you are gathering more and more information to create the perfect plan, someone else is gaining first-mover advantage. That is why a good enough plan rapidly executed is far superior to a perfect plan long delayed.

Leadership Key #3:  When in Doubt, Take Action

In a competitive situation, what should you do if you are unsure about the right action to take? The Prussians, who were the benchmark for military excellence for almost a century, concluded that when you are in doubt, take action. This may sound like a wild, gun-slinger approach, but the concept behind it—it is better to play offence than defense—is sound.

When you take the offensive, you have the opportunity to achieve exactly what you want because you set the agenda and the timetable.

Assume, for example, that two competitors face each other in momentary limbo. Each one is trying to decide what to do and wondering what the other may do. The competitor that moves first gains the advantage and has the opportunity to achieve exactly what they want. The opponent's planning, on the other hand, is by necessity reactive. Moreover, their response options are limited and their best possible outcome is that they don't lose.

Taking the offensive in Execution means more, however, than simply making the first move in a competitive situation. It means going after profit growth by innovating, launching new products and opening new markets. This kind of proactive approach—aggressively attacking to drive continuing profit growth—is very different from the reactive approach where you try to maintain status quo profitability through defensive measures like cost-reduction and price-cutting.

Leadership Key #4:  Plan to Win; Drive Your Plan

The Leadership in many organizations rarely take time to plan beyond the first few steps. They decide upon their first move, after which their "plan" is to sit back and see what happens. For all practical purposes, they turn over responsibility for the future to the market or to their opponent. In fact, most plans fail because the planners deliberately cede the initiative and become reactive.

If you truly want to succeed, you must plan to win and then drive your plan.

That was the secret to success in the Desert Storm air campaign. The Checkmate team designed a plan to win: a strategy that would immediately seize the initiative, and would then maintain momentum, never giving the opponent (the Iraqi system) sufficient time to regain its balance.

Equally important, the execution of the plan was not tentative. The coalition forces imposed the plan on Iraq by aggressively and repeatedly attacking its Centers of Gravity using a fast, precise, parallel approach.

There should be nothing tentative, nothing hesitant about your planning or your execution. Like Desert Storm, strike quickly and decisively.

Leadership Key #5:  Don't Underestimate What It Takes to Win

This key requires careful estimation of the cost of participating at a sufficient level to succeed. If you drive people into a corner where their very survival is at stake, they will give their all to survive. If you want to compete, you need to be willing to pay enough to win.

Competitors rarely have the same level of interest in the outcome of a competition. For a small company with a successful product, the arrival of a new competitor is potentially life threatening. The smaller firm typically reacts by trying to improve the product, cut prices, and generally do whatever it takes to prevent the new competitor from succeeding. Since it is fighting for its survival, the response knows few bounds.

In contrast, it is not uncommon for a large company to enter a market by “testing the waters.” If the test succeeds, the company will increase its efforts; if it does not, it simply pulls the plug.

What is wrong with this approach? It is a weak strategy because, if the competitors are committed, the strategy will probably fail. A market that appeared to offer easy opportunity suddenly becomes very tough. The competition reacts, expected sales fail to materialize, and headquarters soon decides the effort was an error.

As you look at new initiatives for your company, answer this question: Who is most committed to winning, you or your competition? If the answer is your competition, reconsider the initiative. In short, don’t underestimate what it takes to win; if you are not willing to pay the price of success, don’t play.

Leadership Key #6:  Maximize Your Friends and Minimize Your Enemies

There is a certain tendency to think that a higher authority issues enemies and friends and that there is not much you can do about them. But the fact is, there is almost always a choice. 

Microsoft, for instance, is an outstanding organization, but over time it accrued a number of enemies because of what many perceived as arrogance and overly aggressive business practices. So, when the Justice Department launched its anti-trust suit against Microsoft, it had no problem finding willing witnesses to come forward to testify. Few prominent people came forward for the defense.

Had Microsoft not created so many enemies, the Justice Department might never have been able to develop and prosecute its case. Think of all the energy and money Microsoft spent trying to defend itself because the company had so gratuitously offended so many people.

An opposite case in point involves Jamaica Medical Center in Queens, New York, which a few years back was in dire financial straits. Fortunately, the state of New York agreed to help with a bond issue that allowed the Center to recover, expand, and provide more and better service to its community. A major reason for that support was because through the preceding 15 years, Jamaica's leaders had made it a point to visit key government officials at the state capital in Albany, not to ask for anything, but simply to say hello and keep them informed of the health care needs of their community. Not surprisingly, when Jamaica needed help, there were many sympathetic friends in Albany who were ready to lend a hand in finding a solution.

continue article