Missing Link(s)..or Broken?

I look back quite a bit to evaluate and correct my path going forward. Partly, I'm looking for blind-spots. Looking back this morning and I see I've been all over the place; leadership vs management, loan officer commonalities, strategic thinking, goal setting, career questions, blame vs accountability, a couple of book reviews, listening vs hearing, marketing vs selling, Rubbermaid's processes, what Bill Gates didn't say, steweardship, Jack Welch about Green being ok but there needs to be profit, pain-perserverence-character-hope, dress for dollars, looking over your shoulder, wearing blue shirts, do-this-don't-do-that, the pictures-in-our-head...and on-and-on-and-on.

Three times this pass week I've read or heard about "the missing link;" reading about leading, reading about learning and once in a discussion about out-bound vs in-bound marketing.

I think the links are more broken than missing and here's my version -

There are three. One is about Following. We hear about leaders, leading and leadership until it has grown old. Everyone has their version of what is a good leader, or the difference between leadership and managment (how come it's not manageship?). The book "Courageous Follower" is one of my Top 5 Business books.

The second link, broken or missing, is about blind-spots. We think because we can learn so much about processes, strategies, marketing, selling, goal setting, what drives customer service, what makes a good team, how to get more profits, how to build a better widget, on and on and on...we think all this is going to make us better. But we don't pay enough attention to our blind-spots. And we don't even know we have blind-spots unless we're told we have them (that's why they're called blind-spots).

I keep harping on the book "Talent Masters" and Charam/Conaty's opening statement about managing people as well as we manage our money. "Talent Masters" and "Execution" (another Charan) book are also in the Top 5.

Read "Talent Masters" and "Couregous Follower" and you'll get a bit of what I'm saying here -

And the third is learning too much, not any/enough and not using the learning to "get better." By "get better" I mean CHANGE. This one is probably broken and missing!

No matter how good the leadership, we need to be good followers (and have people that follow well). We all need to look around, ask for help and uncover his/her blind spots and Learn Well. None of this is easy, but neither is getting consistent good results.


So...What is your biggest Challenge? (I bet it has to do with people)

What have you been doing about it?

If it's not working.....What are you going to do different?


To that end....

Danny







PS....this posting started out about the loan officer/salesperson's missing link. Maybe it still is.

No comments: