General Colin Powell: 18 Lessons from a very successful leader

Lesson 1: (Good leaders sometimes make people unhappy). Good
leadership involves responsibility to the welfare of the group, which means that some
people will get angry at your actions and decisions. It's inevitable-if you're
honorable. Trying to get everyone to like you is a sign of mediocrity: You'll avoid
the tough decisions, you'll avoid confronting the people who need to be confronted,
and you'll avoid offering differential rewards based on differential performance
because some people might get upset. Ironically, procrastinating on the difficult choices,
by trying not to get anyone mad, and by treating everyone equally "nicely"
regardless of their contributions, you'll simply ensure that the only people
you'll wind up angering are the most creative and productive people in the
organization.

Lesson 2: "The day soldiers stop bringing you their problems is the
day you have stopped leading them. They have either lost confidence that you can help them
or concluded that you do not care. Either case is a failure of a relationship".
If this were a litmus test, the majority of CEOs would fail. One, they build so many
barriers to upward communication that the very idea of someone lower in the hierarchy
looking up to the leader for help is ludicrous. Two, the corporate culture they foster
often defines asking for help as weakness or failure, so people cover up their gaps, and
the organization suffers accordingly. Real leaders make themselves accessible and
available. They show concern for the efforts and challenges faced by underlings -
even as they demand high standards. Accordingly, they are more likely to create an
environment where problem analysis replaces blame.

Lesson 3: "Don't be buffaloed by experts and elites. Experts
often possess more data than judgment. Elites can become so inbred that they produce
hemophiliacs who bleed to death as soon as they are nicked by the real world." Small
companies and startups don't have time for analytically detached experts. They
don't have the money to subsidize lofty elites, either. The president answers the
phone and drives the truck when necessary; everyone on the payroll visibly produces and
contributes to the bottom-line results or they're history. But as companies get
bigger, they often forget who "brung them to the dance": things like all-hands
involvement, egalitarianism, informality, market intimacy, daring, risk, speed, agility.
Policies that emanate from ivory towers often have an adverse impact on the people out in
the field who are fighting the wars or bringing in the revenues. Real leaders are
vigilant-and combative-in the face of these trends.

Lesson 4: " Don't be afraid to challenge the pros, even in their
own backyard." Learn from the pros, observe them, seek them out as mentors
and partners. But remember that even the pros may have leveled out in terms of their
learning and skills. Sometimes even the pros can become complacent and lazy. Leadership
does not emerge from blind obedience to anyone. Xerox's Barry Rand was right on
target when he warned his people that if you have a yes-man working for you, one of you is
redundant. Good leadership encourages everyone's evolution.

Lesson 5: "Never neglect details. When everyone's mind is dulled
or distracted, the leader must be doubly vigilant." Strategy equals
execution. All great ideas and visions in the world are worthless if they can't be
implemented rapidly and efficiently. Good leaders delegate and empower others liberally,
but they pay attention to details every day. (Think about supreme athletic coaches like
Jimmy Johnson, Pat Riley and Tony La Russa). Bad ones - even those who fancy
themselves as progressive "visionaries" - think they're somehow
"above" operational details. "Paradoxically, good leaders understand
something else: An obsessive routine in carrying out the details begets conformity and
complacency, which in turn dulls everyone's mind. That is why even as they pay
attention to details, they continually encourage people to challenge the process. They
implicitly understand the sentiment of CEO-leaders like Quad Graphic's Harry
Quadracchi, Oticon's Lars Kolind and the late Bill McGowan of MCI, who all
independently asserted the Job of a leader is not to be the chief organizer, but the chief
disorganizer.

Lesson 6: "You don't know what you can get away with until you
try." You know the expression "it's easier to get forgiveness than
permission?" Well it's true. Good leaders don't wait for official blessing
to try things out. They're prudent, not reckless. But they also realize a fact of
life in most organizations: If you ask enough people for permission, you'll
inevitably come up against someone who believes his job is to say "no". So the
moral is, don't ask. I'm serious. In my own research with colleague Linda Mukai,
we found that less effective middle managers endorsed the sentiment, "If I
haven't been told ‘yes', I can't do it," whereas the good ones
believed "If I haven't been explicitly told ‘no' I can."
There's a world of difference between these two points of view.

Lesson 7: "Keep looking below surface appearances. Don't shrink
from doing so (just) because you might not like what you find." "If it
ain't broke, don't fix it" is the slogan of the complacent, the arrogant or
the scared. It's an excuse for inaction, a call to non-arms. It's a mind-set
that assumes (or hopes) that today's realities will continue tomorrow in a tidy,
linear and predictable fashion. Pure fantasy. In this sort of culture, you won't find
people who proactively take steps to solve problems as they emerge. Here's a little
tip: Don't invest in these companies.

Lesson 8: " Organization doesn't really accomplish anything.
Plans don't accomplish anything, either. Theories of management don't much
matter. Endeavors succeed or fail because of the people involved. Only by attracting the
best people will you accomplish great deeds." In a brain-based economy, your
best assets are people. We've heard this expression so often that it's become
trite. But how many leaders really "walk the talk" with this stuff? Too often,
people are assumed to be empty chess pieces to be moved around by grand viziers, which may
explain why so many top managers immerse their calendar time in deal making, restructuring
and the latest management fad. How many immerse themselves in the goal of creating an
environment where the best, the brightest, the most creative are attracted, retained and
- most importantly-unleashed.

Lesson 9: "Organization charts and fancy titles count for next to
nothing". Organization charts are frozen, anachronistic photos in a workplace
that ought to be as dynamic as the external environment around you. If people really
followed organization charts, companies would collapse. In well-run organizations, titles
are also pretty meaningless. At best, they advertise some authority-an official status
concerning the ability to give orders or induce obedience. But titles mean little in terms
of real power, which is the capacity to influence and inspire. Have you ever noticed that
people will personally commit to certain individuals who on paper (or on the org. chart)
possess little authority-but instead possess pizzazz, drive, expertise and genuine caring
for teammates and products? On the flip side, non-leaders in management may be formally
anointed with all the perks and frills associated with high positions, but they have
little influence on others, apart from their ability to extract minimal compliance to
minimal standards.

Lesson 10: "Never let your ego get so close to your position that
when your position goes, your ego goes with it." Too often, change is stifled
by people who cling to familiar turfs and job descriptions. One reason that even large
organizations wither is that managers won't challenge old, comfortable ways of doing
things. But real leaders understand that, nowadays, every one of our jobs is becoming
obsolete. The proper response is to obsolete our activities before someone else does.
Effective leaders create a climate where people's worth is determined by their
willingness to learn new skills and grab new responsibilities, thus not perpetually
reinventing their jobs. The most important question in performance evaluation becomes not,
"How well did you perform your job since the last time we met?" but, "How
much did you change it?"

Lesson 11: "Fit no stereotypes. Don't chase the latest
management fads. The situation dictates which approach best accomplishes the team's
mission." Fitting from fad to fad creates team confusion, reduces the
leader's credibility and drains organizational coffers. Blindly following a
particular fad generates rigidity in thought and action. Sometimes speed to market is more
important than total quality. Sometimes an unapologetic directive is more appropriate than
participatory discussion. To quote Powell, some situations require long, loose leashes.
Leaders honor their core values, but they are flexible in how they execute them. They
understand that management techniques are not magic mantras but simply tools to be reached
for at the right times.

Lesson 12: "Perpetual optimism is a force multiplier."
The ripple effect of a leader's enthusiasm and optimism is awesome. So is the impact
of cynicism and pessimism. Leaders who whine and blame engendered those same behaviors
among their colleagues. I am not talking about stoically accepting organizational
stupidity and performance incompetence with a "what, me worry?" smile. I am
talking about a gung ho attitude that says "we can change things here, we can achieve
awesome goals, we can be the best." Spare me the grim litany of the
"realist", give me the unrealistic aspirations of the optimist any day.

Lesson 13: "Powell's Rules for Picking People" - Look
for intelligence and judgment and, most critically, a capacity to anticipate, to see
around corners. Also look for loyalty, integrity, a high energy drive, a balanced ego and
the drive to get things done." How often do our recruitment and hiring
processes tap into these attributes? More often than not, we ignore them in favor of
length of resume, degrees and prior titles. A string of job descriptions a recruit held
yesterday seem to be more important than who one is today, what she can contribute
tomorrow or how well her values mesh with those of the organization. You can train a
bright, willing novice in the fundamentals of your business fairly readily, but it's
a lot harder to train someone to have integrity, judgment, energy, balance and the drive
to get things done. Good leaders stack the deck in their favor right in the recruitment
phase.

Lesson 14: (Borrowed by Powell from Michael Korda): "Great leaders
are almost always great simplifiers, who can cut through argument, debate and doubt to
offer a solution everybody can understand." Effective leaders understand the
KISS principle, Keep It Simple, Stupid. They articulate vivid overarching goals and
values, which they use to drive daily behaviors and choices among competing alternatives.
Their visions and priorities are lean and compelling, not cluttered and buzzword-laden.
Their decisions are crisp and clear, not tentative and ambiguous. They convey an
unwavering firmness and consistency in their actions, aligned with the picture of the
future they paint. The result? Clarity of purpose, credibility of leadership, and
integrity in organizations.

Lesson 15:

Part I: "Use the formula P=40 to 70, in which P stands for the
probability of success and the numbers indicate the percentage of information
acquired."

Part II: "Once the information is in the 40 to 70 range, go with your
gut." Powell's advice is don't take action if you have only enough
information to give you less than a 40 percent chance of being right, but don't wait
until you have enough facts to be 100 percent sure, because by then it is almost always
too late. His instinct is right: "Today, excessive delays in the name of
information-gathering breeds "analysis paralysis". Procrastination in the name
of reducing risk actually increases risk.

Lesson 16: "The commander in the field is always right and the rear
echelon is wrong, unless proven otherwise." Too often the reverse defines
corporate culture. This is one of the main reasons why leaders like Ken Iverson of Nucor
Steel, Percy Barnevik of Asea Brown Boveri, and Richard Branson of Virgin have kept their
corporate staffs to bare-bones minimum. (And I do mean minimum-how about fewer than 100
central corporate staffers for global $30 billion plus ABB? Or around 25 and 3 for
multi-billion Nucor and Virgin respectively?) Shift the power and the financial
accountability to the folks who are bringing in the beans, not the ones who are counting
or analyzing them.

Lesson 17: "Have fun in your command. Don't always run at a
breakneck pace. Take leave when you've earned it: Spend time with your families.

Corollary: "Surround yourself with people who take their work seriously, but
not themselves, those who work hard and play hard." Herb Kelleher of
Southwest Air and Anita Roddick of the The Body Shop would agree: Seek people who have
some balance in their lives, who are fun to hang out with, who like to laugh (at
themselves, too) and who have some non-job priorities which they approach with the same
passion that they do their work. Spare me the grim workaholic or the pompous pretentious
"professional"; I'll help them find jobs with my competitor.

Lesson 18: "Command is lonely." Harry Truman was right.
Whether you're a CEO or the temporary head of a project team, the buck stops here.
You can encourage participative management and bottom-up employee involvement but
ultimately, the essence of leadership is the willingness to make the tough, unambiguous
choices that will have an impact on the fate of the organization. I've seen too many
non-leaders flinch from this responsibility. Even as you create an informal, open,
collaborative corporate culture, prepare to be lonely.