LEADERSHIP: BREAK THE HABIT

Published: 2010-03-01   please add a comment below

A recent article in The Economist ("The three habits ... of highly irritating management gurus"*) focuses on generalisations that gurus pass off as wisdom. The article makes plain that many of their "new" ideas are old; and, most of their case examples lack merit. For me, though, the absurdity is expecting you to replace your own default behaviours with theirs. Why swap one set of habits for another, when leadership should be about problem-solving: working out what to do in a specific situation that brings together a particular group of people and a particular set of business challenges. It's about something new; not what worked elsewhere or for someone in a different situation. It's certainly never about a single approach. So, are you a guru-child or your own leader?

The Economist article is a mixture of admiration and irony. Stephen Covey's "stroke of genius was to blow up the wall between management and self-help." But the article also points out that this explosion was first detonated by Frank Gilbreth in the early 1900s. Collins, Hamel and others come in for similar treatment.

As further evidence against the saint-like gurus so adored by the media and publishers, the article continues its reality check:

• "Five years after 'In Search of Excellence' appeared, a third of its ballyhooed companies were in trouble."
• "Andrew Henderson of the University of Texas has recently subjected ‘excellence studies' to rigorous statistical analysis. He concludes that luck is just as plausible an explanation of their success as excellence."

The Economist says, the gurus' three (irritating) habits are "presenting stale ideas as breathtaking breakthroughs", "naming model firms" and "flogging management tools off numbered lists of facile principles". So what are we poor leaders to do? Well, here's an alternative: a problem-solving approach that gives you a personal action list - not a set of guru-inspired, hand-me-down habits.

1. Put yourself in the shoes of your followers: your subordinates and peers, your boss and others, who you need to come on the journey with you. Work out their concerns: the questions they need answered before committing to follow you.
2. Identify the types of actions you might take - in relation to both their priority hard (technical and market) issues and the soft (people and cultural) ones.
3. Develop a list of action commitments to create your Personal Action List - for leading in your current role: addressing the specific needs of its challenges and people.

The only worthwhile leadership habit is not to have habits at all. If a leadership assignment is worth doing, it merits customised planning - that generates your Personal Action List.

Dr. Timothy Pascoe AM
PhD (Cambridge), MBA (Harvard), BE & BEc (Adelaide)
Creator, V|E|C|T|O|R Leadership^®