Why Leadership?

I decided to digress with this post before continuing our discussion of the leadership ladder.  I know I refer to John Maxwell’s ideas in many of these posts but as the prominent voice on leadership, it’s hard not to use his concepts.  The graph below illustrates the multiplicative effect of leadership.  Maxwell uses success dedication as the horizontal axis where I think a better label is work dedication or work ethic.  A casual review of the graph shows that if I work my tail off (work dedication of 9) in an organization with little leadership (leadership of 1); the result is poor effectiveness (9 X 1 = 9).  By improving the leadership (increase leadership to 3), you can see a threefold increase in effectiveness.   Organizations spent significant time and money on implementing employee retention and incentive programs while overlooking leadership.  They focus on the effect, low morale, poor retention, and disgruntled employees without focusing on the cause, poor leadership.    

New Year's Resolutions

As 2012 is upon us, I guess it’s time to make a New Year’s resolution.  I know what you’re thinking; the big guy is resolved to losing weight again.  Although that is definitely on the list, I’m throwing you a curve ball.  As I reflect on 2011, it is clear to me that I allowed life’s circumstances to cloud my vision; blurring my priorities.  That happens sometimes.  The noise of life becomes so loud that we become distracted for a week, then a month, and before we know it, another New Year’s Eve celebration has come and gone and we find ourselves asking, “What happened?”  Then we resolve to put our old habits behind us and start the New Year off with good habits and limitless possibilities. After a few months, the vicious cycle starts again.  Why?  What is it that prevents us from keeping those resolutions?  For me, it is focusing on the resolution as the destination as opposed to viewing it as a mile marker along the journey.  Once I feel like I have established a completed a resolution, it feels like I have arrived and the clouds start rolling in making the clear path I saw early in the year difficult to navigate.  John Maxwell says it this way, “Success is a journey, not a destination.   Don’t think of success as a place.  Think of it as a path.   Success is a journey you can enjoy a day at a time.”  So, what is my resolution this year?  To see every day as another day in the journey toward influencing those people God puts into my life.  There will be good days and bad, victories and defeats, mountains and valleys, but by establishing mile markers to gauge my progress and light the path, I hope to stay focused on the journey.