Home Depot came to town a few years back. The who’s in-charge sign has the managers name in a small white box on a piece of removable tape. That’s good as multiple GM’s have come and gone through the revolving door of Home Depot management.

Top Grocery is the local super market. One of a Washington State chain of thirty-two community stores owned by the Haggen Family. The local Top store manager is not a Haggen yet his name is on the entrance to the store and presented in a way that shows real ownership. I am guessing Tim is not an equity owner in this family business yet he sure does appear to have ownership in and accountability for his store.

In both cases the GM has big accountability. A hundred or more employees, a many million dollar facility, the safety of all who enter and profitability top the list. In one case optics demonstrate corporate confidence in the GM. Top Grocery creates an expectation of a high performing professional leader and a top notch store. The store lives up to that expectation. Home Depot doesn’t.

Maybe Home Depot has a musical chairs policy for GM’s, or maybe they create a self-fulfilling prophesy. Is there conscious thought behind the simple tacky sign with the small box for the removable tape with the store managers name?

Leaders of leaders, give some extra thought to the optics of expectations. What’s important here is what the quality of the sign says about the value the business places on the employee whose name is on the sign.

If you have decided to sit in one of the musical chair GM roles like Home Depot, make an investment.

Get your own sign. Have it professionally designed and produced. Give yourself a professional image to live up to. It’s a hardware store. There are tools. Hang your sign prominently and proudly. Be sure it is portable. I’m the Outsider and that’s what I think.

Leaders make good decisions and bad ones, smart decisions and dumb decisions. Good organizations may take actions that sully a previously solid and reputable history. Such things are costly and tough to undo. When personal filters drive irrarational decision making, fasten your seatbelt, there is a wild ride ahead.

Susan B. Komen for the Cure learned that lesson last week. The related learning for leaders has nothing to do with individual personal positions on the issue of abortion and/or Planned Parenthood.

It has everything to do with leadership accountabilty. If you have been out-or-touch for the last week… Karen Handel, Komen’s VP for Public Policy drove a decision to stop Komen financial contributions to Planned Parenthood. Her position was based on a staunch anti-abortion personal value.  Ms. Handel is one of thirteen members of the Susan B. Komen for the Cure leadership team.

There were three big leadership failures here for which a big price will be paid.

1. Personal belief and political game trumped good of the organization. Ms. Handel reportedly said,  ”If we just say it’s about investigations, we can defund Planned Parenthood and no one can blame us for being political.” Busted! You can’t call a duck a cat and expect that no one will hear the quack.
2. Twelve were MIA.  Leaders Cause, Participate in or Allow (CPA) bad decisions.  A decision of this magnitude may have been driven by one tenacious executive, yet clearly did not follow a thoughtful team decision making process. Who were the dissenters and why were they not heard? Where was the collective ability of the leadership team to follow Aretha’s direction and think.
3. Harming the mission is phony integrity.  An individual leader can choose to fall on their sword for personal principle. There can be integrity in such an act. That integrity is personal and greatly diminished  when the leaders actions force the organization to fall on it’s sword in ways that harm the mission.

Live your values. Sometimes there is conflict with what is expected of you as a leader. If that is big and persistent and beyond your ability to change, integrity demands that you go elsewhere. Ms. Handel will likely be doing so, soon. It will take awhile longer to restore public faith in the leadership of Susan B. Komen for the Cure. I’m the Outsider and that’s what I think.

It seems that every group of people working together in any organization is now referred to as a team. Few actually function as a high performing team.

Be aware and cautious of the tendency to  dumb-down individuality for the sake of team harmony. Give smart people a forum to disagree. A clearly understsood  mission to which every team member is aligned and committed is the starting point. Get clear on how the team will engage in a way that builds and maintains trust. Anticipate the factors that may get in the way.

The ability of a team to leverage the intellect, drive and commitment of the “I’s” on a team is what makes membership on the team valuable to the members and the business. The best leaders create shared perspective, build team skills and use team leadership tools in ways that make it easier and more satisfying to get great results. I’m the Outsider and that’s what I think

Mother Theresa is not on your payroll. While great sacrifice and compassion were hallmarks of her work in the slums of Calcutta, she got something of value for herself as a result of the work.

WIIFM (What’s in it for me?) is always in the equation. The answers to that questions are as varied as there are people helping you achieve the vision.  WIIFM  is not selfishness, it is reality – the way humans are  wired.  People engage with a leader to  help achieve a vision because they get something out of it for themselves. That  something is a different mix of tangibles and intangibles as unique as there  are individuals on the team.

Increasing shareholder return is a non-starter in terms of motivating people who are not shareholders.

In these times of high unemployment some leaders deceive themselves into thinking, “my people are just happy to have a job.” That mentality has a shelf life that is just about over and the people in the business who sit on that shelf are not likely the best performers. Understand, the unemployment rate for educated professionals and  skilled trades people hovers around 4.5 – 5% even in what we are still calling
a bad economy.

The golden rule in the employment relationship was long thought to be the one with the gold makes the rules. That remains true yet the best leaders understand that the agreement  between employer and employed must be mutually beneficial, and the battle for talent rewrites the rules. Effective leaders, top floor to shop floor are committed to helping others get what they want in exchange for the blood, sweat
and tears that go into helping the team and business get where it is going.

Competitive salary and benefits are baseline price-of-admission elements, the starting point. The answer to the WIIFM question is the reason the best, most productive people are on your team. If you can’t answer that question accurately, specific to each of these people, you have some work to do. I’m the Outsider and that’s what I think.

Inherent in the belief that employees are human beings who must produce rather than simple instruments of production is the commitment to respect the dignity of those led. People will do stupid things, make bad decisions, and make mistakes. So will you. Learn from them and help others do so. In the rare situation when someone’s behavior violates ethics, integrity and demonstrates an unacceptable character flaw, get rid of them now. The team expects it. Do it in a way that respects dignity, whether you think they have any or not.

Anyone who has worked with a highly competent and effective leader has grown as a result of the experience. “People are doing the best they can, they will do better when they know how,” is an adage that has been around awhile in the realm of human development. A good addendum to that quote is that it is the leader’s job to help them know how.  Consider adopting a personal value that everyone that works under your leadership will grow, improve and be better as a result.

The best leaders build better human beings, not just better employees. I’m the Outsider and that’s what I think.

Pal David was an elementary school principal in a rural community many years back. One of his school buses broke down, in the road, on a dangerous curve, near the school. The driver’s capability was limited. The principal was called. While not licensed to drive a school bus, he knew how based upon truck driving experience from back in his college days. He went to the bus, hopped in the drivers seat and was able to drive it to a safe place.

The union contract said that management could not do bargaining unit work. A grievance was filed. Time and resources that should have gone to educating children were wasted. The principal got a slap on the wrist, and smiled.

I am not anti-union. I understand precedent. I am anti-stupidity. When rules and policies need to be broken, character demands they be broken.

When common sense is at the crossroads character demands that we do what is right. Sometimes the only reward is our own sense of self-worth and legacy of character. I’m the Outsider and that’s what I think.

Thomas Edison invented the light bulb and from that Charles Coffin (1892 – 1912) invented General Electric. Inherent in that were two social innovations that established the foundation for Welch’s success – research laboratories and systematic management development. According to leadership guru Jim Collins, Calling GE, “The House that Jack Built,” isn’t quite accurate. In a Fortune article about the greatest CEO’s of all times he writes, “In fact Welch was as much a product of GE as vice-versa.”

In this excellent CNN/Money/Fortune article, The 10 Greatest CEO’s of all Time, author Jim Collins (Good to Great) says relative to General Electric, “Coffin built the stage upon which they all played.”

The many things that GE does right can not be directly installed as bits and pieces to other business that lack the foundation. Great leadership accomplishments may be the vision of one but they get done as the result of big efforts and hard work by many top floor to shop floor leaders doing good work every day. I’m the Outsider and that’s what I think.

Some call it leadership. Some call it management. It is a unique alchemy that moves seamlessly from one to the other at any point in time on any day. Some believe that at a granular level, leadership is about people and management about stuff. To achieve results through others requires both. I like the term Leader as the catchall word to define the work of being the person in charge, the boss, the team leader, the place where the buck stops for a specific group of people.

Leadership is the solution to what ails us and we are seriously ailed in America at this point – largely due to leadership failure in both the private and public sectors. Amid a parade of criminals,  hucksters and PR machine celebrity CEO’s we mentally sort the wheat from the chaff in determining credibility. Bernie Madoff, Dennis Koslowski, Jeffrey Skilling go to prison.

Richard Branson builds great companies with good people providing great service. Bill Gates and Steven Jobs build companies that change the world.  Behind the scenes and in no small part supporting and making possible the monumental success of great CEO’s is a legion of shop floor to top floor leaders that make it happen every day.

If you are in the shop-floor to top-floor heirarchy, your perspective and related actions impact the business and the lives of those you lead – every day.

The best leaders provide profound value to the business and the lives of those led. What are you going to learn in 2012 to make your job as a leader easier, more satisfying and more valuable? Learning that improves competence, courage and effectiveness when passed on to those led creates exponential leverage for results.

There is career security.  There is no job security. You are a professional leader. Remember, leadership is the solution to what ails us and plenty ails us. That is career security and the dog is getting tired of being the best friend of someone who kicks her.  I’m the Outsider and that’s what I think.

Case in point: In a business setting, basic math indicates that the person with the higher salary is the one whose time is most valuable. The average Fortune 500 company CEO’s time is worth about $4000 an hour and a top 20 US hedge fund manager’s time, $268,000 an hour. This is just math.  In-fact, neither of these people sell their time.

If either of these people suffer a heart attack, get shot or hit by a car, in an instant the $30 an hour paramedic’s time becomes more valuable.

That’s the problem with using money as the only measuring stick to define value.

My time is more valuable to me and your time is more valuable to you and then things change. You need something that I can provide and all of a sudden my time becomes more valuable to you than your own. I want something from you and now your time is more valuable to me than my own.

Mutual respect is an essential for people working cooperatively in an organization and it is demonstrated in a number of ways. Respecting colleague’s time is one of them.

If your title, position and ego have convinced you that it is ok to be late to meetings, cancel meetings on a whim, turn a scheduled half-hour meeting into a one hour meeting,or anything else that is disrespectful to your colleagues time, your mind is playing tricks on you.

A leader who jerks people around because they can is a jerk. I’m the Outsider and that’s what I think.

He has been gone for nine years. He always recognized December 7th and I learned to also. Dad was fiercely independent so he became an entrepreneur. He started three businesses one of which has been operating for forty years now and is still in the family. There were things he  knew that served him well in business.

1. Things could be worse and they will get better. He almost died on the tarmac at Kaneohe Bay on the morning of December 7, 1941. When times got tough as they do occasionally for entrepreneurs he knew they would get better, there would always be another customer and that he could find them and he did.
2. Your word must mean something. He had a reputation in the community for honesty and integrity. It was important to him and he did what was necessary to keep it sparkling clean.
3. Say what you mean and mean what you say. Clear, to the point, no waffle words. You always knew exactly what he expected, and what he thought. He was once 86ed from his granddaughters softball game for heckling the opposing team’s pitcher. He never understood player self-esteem being more important than competition. (His granddaughter went on to be on the short list of best top ten collegiate pitchers during her university years)
4. Determination -  He had little education and and even less capital. His business plans were in his head. His chances of success slim. He did it anyway.
5. Give people a hand – He picked cotton as a child and came to California like a family in a Steinbeck novel. That together with living though the depression and the war gave him a soft spot for people in need. Many people came and went through the doors of the businesses. A good many of them took advantage. He never lost his compassion.
6. Your life get’s easier when those around you learn and grow. As soon as I could drive I was behind the wheel of a van and had my own weekend accounts and a couple of guys to work with me.
7. Clear accountability – When a customer who my crew and I served complained Dad took me with him to talk to the customer and fix the problem.
8. Buck up and get it done or I’ll find someone who will. He had no patience for laziness or whining.
9. Ambiguity and gray areas were not for Dad – Teamwork was not in fashion back then. To Dad a team was a group of people playing baseball or football. People worked for Dad. His idea of a team at work would have been a group of people doing what I want, how I want it done. Crystal clear. No ambiguity.

Tom Brokaw called them the Greatest Generation and that sounds about right. I’m the Outsider and that’s what I think.

Archie A. Boek, 1919 – 2002