Amen to Good Leadership
Before appearing on television show The Big Idea, I was in an eatery in the Portland airport talking to one of the show’s producers. She was interviewing me about my views and philosophy of business and leadership.
When I finished the call, a gentleman approached and introduced himself. He was a doctor from a major medical center. “I don’t know who you are or who you were talking to but I just wanted to say ‘amen’ to what you were saying!”
He explained that the leadership and business principles I talked about on the call were sadly missing at his place of employment and shared that his boss made his life harder, not easier. He was frustrated by the barriers to doing a better job and making a bigger difference in his work.
I was grateful for his positive feedback but discouraged that a highly educated and obviously committed professional working for a major institution was so dismayed by the lack of good leadership in his organization.
Good leadership is rarely easy but it is relatively simple. Let the good doctor’s comments be a warning to leaders everywhere.
August 31st, 2008 at 5:08 pm
Mark,
I am an accountant at a Dallas based property management firm in Dallas. I work directly for the Controller, and have intimate conversations with our CEO on work division and leadership.
How did I get the CEO’s attention? By doing just what the doctor ordered - getting involved with the solution - and not just wanting to find a better job.
An accountant with just two years of experience can find decent pay and never have to leave Dallas. Anyone on our staff could leave and find work within the next two weeks. But we seemed to be burning out our most precious resource - people.
I saw a need. I assembled the accountants and enumerated some of the problems in our department. We brainstormed with ideas on how we can redistribute the work and who can take on certain responsibilities. Our Human Resources Manager caught wind of this and pulled me into her office. She loved what we were doing and asked me some pointed quesitons about how we were doing it and what our goals were.
I learned something there… we really didn’t have a defined goal in mind - we just wanted to make things easier on each other and get the Controller more time to do the things only she could do. She was taking on problems that the accountants could handle and we were trying to head these “little” problems off so she would have time to work on her day to day work that was falling behind.
Even this plan needed a goal - so that we would know if we accomplished it!
I didn’t have a title other than Staff Accountant - in fact, I think my title now became of my actions learlier. The title follows the attitude and not vice verse.