Are
leaders born, or made?
Both-
with the right business tools
Are leaders born, or made? Is leadership a function of nature, or
nurture?
The answer is both. Some people are born leaders. But which ones? And how
will they show their leadership colors unless they are placed in the right
environment?
These questions are at the heart of strategic leadership planning for
most companies, large and small.
If you don't have a contingency of leaders on staff and others primed to
step up into leadership roles, you will undoubtedly find yourself way behind the
pack. Nurturing leaders takes more than luck or intuition.
The
right tools for the job
How
can your company identify a leader? Not by a resume or an interview. Research
shows that 98% of resumes contain some form of fraud, deception overstatement or
misleading claim.
Most employment interviews are cosmetic and can be manipulative. You may
already have many leaders within your company but don't recognize them as such.
In some cases a company leader will surface only during a crisis. The key is to
identify these leaders before a crisis occurs. Any employees with leadership
potential who have not been identified for their capabilities early on
have been cheated out of using all of their talents. Conversely, the employer
has lost a huge opportunity to benefit from those talents.
Creating
leaders requires an effective system
"You can have a vision, but if you don't have the road map or the
tools you can't get where you want to go, and you can't lead. Managers need
leadership tools that give you the facts, with clarity," said John King,
president of the statewide Roster Network, an alliance of professional-services
firms. When King talks about clarity he's referencing several systematic
leadership tools including Activity Based Costing and Activity Based Management,
ISO/QS Certification and Business Efficiency Testing. All of these systems
provide the employer with the clarity to better understand where their business
is going, or should be going. Another tool, called the Position Matrix, provides
a clear picture of what employees are doing (or should be doing)!
Many
companies encounter problems because they lack performance measurements and
documentation on which to base key leadership decisions.
"Some companies are selecting people based on subjective criteria
and throwing them into assignments with little direction and no accountability.
That's like the sand-lot baseball games we played as kids," King said.
Just
as in sports, business teams that select the best players and give them the best
tools will win. It begins with tracking your progress against your competition.
Keeping
score with Business Efficiency Testing
"The data is easy to obtain and can be priceless," King said.
For example, if your competitors are getting a better deal from the same
suppliers, you'd like to know that. Likewise, if you are underpaying or
overpaying people in similar jobs, you need to know that too.
Tying
employees' goals to their supervisors' goals
So Business Efficiency Testing is a good way to keep score and step out
of Sand-Lot Business. Another tool is the Position Matrix, which provides
employees with clear job descriptions and ties their performance goals to the
goals of their supervisor. "That's crucial. When every employee is working
on goals consistent with the goals of their supervisor, throughout the
organization, you've got real momentum to get things done," King said.
"That's how you make a vision a reality."
The process also has built-in performance mechanisms to identify
potential leaders and give them goals to demonstrate their potential. The system
is at work in literally thousands of companies today and has been continually
refined and enhanced.
There will continue to be a lot of Sand-Lot Businesses in the future, but for business leaders to stay competitive, it will take a lot more than making decisions on the fly. It will take empowered employees with phenomenal leadership skills, and the winners will be the companies that have the better tools!