New Commandments for Leaders

From Jim Murray's new blog ... Jim is an longstanding net-acquaintance, and his words always contain much truth and helpful advice.

"If I were to suggest ten commandments to guide today’s chief executives in the task of building innovative, resilient, high-performance teams, my initial list would probably look something like this.

THOU SHALT:

1. Have a vision for change and "connect" it to your employees’ reality
Don’t expect your organization to change if employees do not know where you want to go. Don’t assume that they know what the intended change means for their day-to-day job. Explain exactly how their role and performance is crucial in fulfilling your vision.

2. Remove the barriers that impede or retard progress towards the goal
Things always stand in the way of change. As the chief executive, you have the power and ability to remove or alter those things. Your employees may not. It can be as simple as giving explicit permission to do things differently or being more tolerant of the inevitable "productivity dip" as people develop new competencies.

3. Remember that the primary objective is progress not perfection
Change requires courage and patience. Rome was not built in a day. Reward success and see failure as part of the learning process. Give constructive feedback by pointing the way, not the finger. Nurture intellectual capital, don’t intimidate and alienate it.

4. Ensure your senior managers emulate the desired change
Actions always speak louder than words. The objective is not to tell but to show, dramatically and empathically, how the new way of doing things will start at the top. Senior management buy-in must be unequivocal, whole-hearted and openly demonstrated. Words become meaningless when behaviours tell a different story.

Read the rest of the article ...