Tom: At a speech in South Bend several years ago I heard you talk about how business mistakes are merely learning opportunities, and it takes great leadership to overcome those mistakes. What is the single biggest mistake in todays business environment? T. C.
Answer: T. C. There are three that are at the core of almost all business mistakes.
- To confuse a Measure as a Vision – To BE a $100 Million Company – To BE the Market Share Leader – To Maximize Shareholder Value -- are all legitimate measures of business success, but people are not inspired to “achieve a number.”
- To try and solve “systemic” problems with “solutions.” An example we see often is to want to change the “culture” of an organization.
- To confuse Strategy as a Purpose – to deploy resources “against” something rather than “for” the customer. “Defeat the Competition” is the most common. This Win-Lose orientation results in massive amounts of negative feedback for everyone.
All three of these would require extensive explanations that are beyond the scope of this blog. Simply stated great Leaders embrace a new Context to drive change rather than fix, solve or improve the linear Content of the work environment. Nothing “different” comes from Content manipulation. It only occurs from a “recontextualization.” Our Founding Fathers changed the Context of the “Colonies” to “States” allowing their “cultures” to remain intact – yet demanding that new “United States” Content to be invented. It would have been a massive mistake to allow the Colonies to become Countries like they were in Europe. Leaders in todays business environment must “unite” (align) all the functional entities to create a “capability” due to the intense need for “real time” responsiveness.
I wrote about this form of Leadership in my book Transformational Change which you received at the South Bend meeting. If you need additional copies, I have them here at my office or it is available at Amazon.com.