Leadership

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Leadership is the litmus test to success or failure in much of business and this is certainly true for a cultural changing transformation.  Of the five leading indicators of cultural change, leadership is the first and most important one.  (See “How To Implement Lean Manufacturing, 2nd Edition, McGraw Hill, 2015, click on “Books” for a direct link to Amazon)

 

There is a distinction we make between leadership and management.  Although managers (the noun) need to have both management and leadership skills to succeed, many have lost sight that there are two different skill sets with two differnet objectives.

 

The goal of management is to create a predictable and orderly set of outcomes such as on-time delivery, high quality and being on budget. 

The goal of leadership, on the other hand, is to create and navigate through the changes that are necessary so the business will survive and prosper.

 

The key skills of management are the age old classics of ;

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• Planning and budgeting

• Organizing and staffing and

• Controlling and problem solving

 

While the skills of leadership are:

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• Establishing a vision, a future state to change to

• Aligning people through actions and communications

• Motivating and inspiring the workforce to act ( adapted from Leading Change, HBS Press, 1996)

 

Most businesses today are over-managed and under led…and this is the key reason we are losing jobs to overseas suppliers.

 

In the classic book by Athos and Pascale, “The Art of Japanese Management” (Simon and Schuster, 1981) the authors make two very revealing and daring statements.  However, as you read the book, both statements, while controversial in nature, are supported with numerous examples.  They said:

 

“Japan is doing more than a little right.  And our hypothesis is that a big part of that “something” has only a little to do with such techniques as its quality control circles and lifetime employment.  In this book we will argue that a major reason for the superiority of the Japanese is their managerial skills”

 

And they also said:

 

“Takeo Fujisawa, cofounder of Honda Motor Corporation, once observed that ‘Japanese and American management is 95% the same yet differs in all important respects’”

 

How we can help

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We teach leadership and furthermore we can teach you how to teach leadership and dramatically improve your leadership footprint.  To do so we use some teaching, but emphasize more coaching and mentoring.  Special emphasis is given to:

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• Leadership versus management…why both are required

  • Why we are typically overmanaged and underled

  • The problem of the MBA gone wrong

• The 3 classic roles of leadership

• Why situational leadership is required

  • The four styles of leadership

  • Servant leadership

• How to make leaders of them all

• Lean Leadership

  • The Six Skills of Lean Leadership

  • How to lead with questions

  • The four leadership work rules

  • Leadership and the Four Ah-Ha experiences