Tomocross

Do your commitments match your convictions? by Donald N. Sull and Dominic Houlder

This reading is telling about how we manage the differences between our professed values and our actual behavior. Managerial commitments are actions taken in the present that bind an organization to a future course. Indeed, our most important commitments are the result of mundane decisions we make about how to allocate our  money, time, and energy.

In managing my commitments, first step is take a quick inventory of what matters to you. In order to clarify this inventory, we need to avoid overly vague nouns and to use more specific gerunds and phrases. The “five” commitments are enough to cover the multiple dimensions of their lives. Yet, if the number exceeds ten, I’m probably not focusing on the highest priority value or the most critical ones. Some values generate less positive reinforcement than others and, as a result, tend to attract fewer resources.

The second step is to look closely at how committed you are, more specifically, to the items listed in the first column. Our most binding commitments are frequently the result of day-to-day decisions too small to attract our attention. 

The third step is to convert the expenditures into a percentage of your household income and plot the percentages against your ranked values. (Time, Money, Energy) A much more common reason for the gap is that people are entangled in commitments they made in the past.

When I read this article, I agree with the idea of ”commitment creep”. This creep sometimes happens to me because I always set a higher goal. During executing this commitment, I got something too creep to achieve the goal.

After creating this commitments, I wonder if working a company does not matter to me. Perhaps I need to create what the matter is for my work. Also, it’s better for me to divide two types of time, substantial time (for sleeping and eating), and the other.

In addition, thought the author said that the most common catalyst for serious change is a personal or professional crisis, we need to create this crisis intentionally. Due to intentional crisis, I think I need to review this time allocation. Every once or twice a year, I’ve reviewed my experience. As I compile my review history more, I easily find my good examples so that I improve my commitments.

Group Work ~ A leadership story

Today, I had a group assignment instead of a class. In this group assignment, we discussed our own leadership story. What I found is that the practice is different from the theory.

There are several key findings as follows:

First, though effective leadership again is based primarily on being consistent, I couldn’t be consistent. Instead of catchy buzz words, I need more practical actions. Indeed, though I understood being consistent is important, I didn’t because there was no idea to remind me of being consistent.

Second, there is the Asian culture, that we have to respect older person even though they are not good person. Indeed, We hesitate to tell a truth to older person. Yet, there is a similar experience to James, who is one of my group member and he also have to become a leader followed by elderly employees. I learned from him that using my boss’s power is effective to resolve this situation. More specifically, I need to get the ‘sponsorship’ from your boss first, and then approach the team which includes older managers. I found this workshop is pretty effective. 

CEO Transition

This past week was a remarkable one in the technology business. At the start of the week, Steve Jobs passed the leadership of Apple to Tim Cook. 

When a founder cannot work more for any reason, you must find someone who can ably replace them. Ideally that person, like Tim Cook, will come from within a company. An internal transition of leadership looks much less intrusive than an external transition of leadership.

There is no right answer to the question of who should lead a company. It should not always be the founder, although founder led companies are often the best companies. And it should not always be operating executives, although talented operating executives will clearly be needed in every great company.

This topic looks far from me but I think CEO transition is one of the most critical work for a leader.

The five practices of exemplary leadership

• model the way
  • guiding principles: clarify values by finding your voice and affirming shared ideals
  • set the example by aligning actions with shared values
• inspire a shared vision ~ leadership is a dialogue not a monologue
  • envision the future by imagining exciting and ennobling possibilities
  • enlist others in a common vision by appealing to shared aspirations
• challenge the process ~ leadership is learning by doing. Try, Fail and Learn
  • search for opportunities by seizing the initiative and by looking outward for innovative ways to improve
  • experiment and take risks by constantly generating small wins and learning from experience
• enable others to act
  • foster collaboration by building trust and facilitating relationships
  • strengthen others by increasing self-determinaton and developing competence
• encourage the heart
  • recognize contributions by showing appreciation for individual excellence
  • celebrate the values and victories by creating a spirit of community

I have experimented exemplary leadership when I worked in Japan. He was my boss and managed the internet auction division. In his career, this auction department is smaller than others, but his management style seemed to be same. One thing I cannot forget is that his building relationship with us. As the article shows, he encouraged us by creating very simple but strong words to inspire his shared vision. I think this understandable words are critical for employees especially part-time or fresh worker who don’t have any experience to work. They usually work simple routine work, yet this basic work is critical for the business. Therefore, I think building relationship with these less experienced workers is as important as managers. I sometime saw that some managers lacked building relationship with them and failed to do their businesses. My previous boss was good at building relationship with them and this characteristics is the element of leadership.

What leaders really do ~ John P. Kotter

What leaders really do is to prepare organizations for change and help them cope as they struggle through it. While management is about coping with complexity, leadership is about coping with change. There are three differences between management and leadership. Leadership treated as follows.

- setting a direction - developing a vision of the future

- aligning people

  it is more of a communications challenge than a design problem. it leads to empowerment in a way that organizing rarely does. The reason why aligning people is important is as follows: 

  1. when a clear sense of direction has been communicated throughout an organization, lower-level employees can initiate actions without the same degree of vulnerability

  2. because everyone is aiming at the same target, the probability is less that one person’s initiative will be stalled when it comes into conflict with someone else’s.

- motivating and inspiring - keeping people moving in the right direction, despite major obstacles to change, by appealing to basic but often untapped human needs, values, and emotions.

  A variety of ways to motivating people.

  1. they always articulate the organization’s vision in a manner that stresses the values of the audience they are addressing.

  2. to support employee efforts to realize the vision by providing coaching, feedback, and role modeling, thereby helping people grow professionally and enhancing their self-esteem.

  3. good leaders recognize and reward success, which not only gives people a sense of accomplishment but also makes them feel like they belong to an organization that cares about them.

I agree with his idea, yet I follow up his opinion. I think the most significant difference between managers and leaders is that a leader can make a decision while a manager can’t. That’s why a leader copes with change. This means that a leader can cut other options. Though we tend to keep several options for advantage, on the other hand, keeping these options makes us to leave in the current situation. In this situation, we can’t change the situation and become a leader either.

One thing I want to mention is that “get things done” needs for both managers and leaders. As a practice of my company, the CEO requires “get things done” concepts for every manager. The CEO said that there are two types people - people who has ”best effort basis” or ”get things done”. Compared with the ”best effort basis” idea, people who has “get things done” idea don’t give up achieving their goals and keep striving for that. I like this idea and every leader should have this concept.

A model of leadership ~ In class 2

In terms of today’s class, there are two things I need to think. One is “money”. The prof. said that money symbolizes something. As a manager at my company, though I consider money good incentive, I seldom think it in depth. In order to use this effective incentive, I saw some subordinates and recognized whether they move because of money. Yet, given that I would ask them what the most substantial need is, it seems apparent that monetary incentive works more effectively because I understand why they need money. Indeed my respectful boss asks us what we do with lots of money.

The other topic I think is “corporate value”. By experiencing to create “corporate value”, I understand the importance of “corporate value”. Though everybody defines what the corporate value is, my idea about “corporate value” is the energy which unites all employees and which brings us to achieve mission. In creating the corporate value, all managers thought what we were lack of. At that time, we always think about ourselves, and did not have any customer perspective. For example, when releasing a new service (since I worked at e-commerce company and need to improve services), we always thought this service was new. On the other hand, customers didn’t need whether this service is new. What they wanted is improvement for incumbent service, such as useful user interfaces or accessibility. Indeed without customers preference, we created the service. By creating the “corporate value”, we remembered the customer perspective, and therefore we could unite our behavior.

I think I need framework for thinking about leadership. Though learning the leadership lessons and examples, it seems so empirical that I worry about something is missing.

Leadership as work

What impresses me about this book is as follows:

- Leadership to what end is thus the crucial question. Indeed, the leader sets the goals, sets the priorities, and sets and maintains the standards. Before accepting a compromise, the effective leader has thought through what is right and desirable. The leader’s first ask is to be the trumpet that sounds a clear sound. An effective leader knows, of course, that there is a risk: able people tend to be ambitious. In achieving success, the final requirement of effective leadership is to earn trust.

- Effective leadership - and again this is very old wisdom - is not based on being clever; it is based primarily on being consistent.

I think that the points of leadership are following three points.

An effective leader should think deeper than others to make a right decision.

An effective leader should tell what you decide with easy words to trumpet a clear sound.

An effective leader should be responsible for what s/he decided.

Through this step, an leader should always be logical to be consistent. 

Teaching smart people how to learn by Chris Argyris

Smart people need to reflect critically on their own behavior, identify the ways they often inadvertently contribute to organization’s problems, and then change how they act. They rarely fail or blame others so they don’t accept their failure and can’t reflect themselves.

Since nobody wants to think they missed, accepting failure is strenuous. Yet, nobody succeed without failure and successful leaders learn from their failure. I think there are three steps to learn lessons from the failure. First, we should be modest to accept the failure. Even though we need a stubborn to outsiders, we should always be modest to myself. I think without this modest, we never consider the reflection for our  activities. Second, we have time to reflect our mind and behavior and consider what mind we need to avoid the unexpected results. By reflecting our activities, we might recognize which behaviors caused to wrong results. Third, we consider what behaviors need for this mind change. I think this third step is the most important, because we can’t change our behavior even though we recognize we need to change mind. In order to support to change our mind, we should consider what concrete behavior we should change.

Introduction of “Effective Executive” - Peter F. Drucker

I started reviewing Peter Drucker’s book, “Effective Executive”. I read it in Japanese and it impressed me a lot. This time, I read it in English and reviewed it. 

In his introduction he said that you should not ask “What do I want to do” but “What needs to be done?”  I think this means that leaders should consider not subjective but rather objective leadership, that leader should NOT be selfish BUT other-centered. By thinking about “other-centeredness”, a leader acquires followers. In other words, they support him/her.