Leadership
A good friend sent me a note yesterday with a comparison of a boss to a leader, attributed to H. Gordon Selfridge:
The boss drives his people; the leader coaches them.
The boss depends upon authority; the leader on goodwill.
The boss inspires fear; the leader inspires enthusiasm.
The boss says “I”; the leaders says “WE”.
The boss says, “Get here on time”; the leader gets there ahead of time.
The boss fixes the blame for the breakdown; the leader fixes the breakdown.
The boss knows how it’s done; the leader shows how.
The boss says, “Go”; the leader says, “Let’s Go!”
I surely can’t argue with this, but I can tell you from personal experience that there are certain situations and certain mission where you inherit certain people or a certain state of affairs in the effort and even those considered good leaders are completely flummoxed. I’d never consider me the “best of leaders” (I have way too much still to learn and to prove to lay claim to even being an “effective leader”), but I have served in lots of leadership roles and I have been completely flummoxed at times in the job at hand or the people I’ve been staffed with to complete a specific mission.  In thinking back, I’ve been flummoxed more by the team members inherited than by the complexity of the mission at hand. Maybe that’s why I enjoy a startup environment so much – though money may be tight, at least you can typically build your own team of people you totally trust to accomplish the job at hand.  There have been times though where I’ve been given that “impossible mission” and jumped in boldly thinking my leadership would change the inevitable outcome. Sometimes it did, and those efforts were euphoric. Other times it didn’t, and those times were devastating.
I can think of 2 specific times (so many more, but so little time) where I charged forward in an impossible mission trying to be the leader mentioned above, and all of my efforts led to despair:
(1) I was challenged to lead a development environment where I inherited a low cost team that had no experience with the capabilities that were being packaged into the product and had no real experience with the people that would eventually buy the product if it ever made it into production. Because the costs were 1/4th (at least) of what it would cost using a “slam dunk” development team, I was asked to “lead” this team to success in spite of severe constraints and extreme reservations. Sure enough, all the “let’s go” in the world didn’t help as we struggled to hit deadlines and struggled with delivering capabilities.
(2) I was challenged to client manage a deployment environment where the opening comments from the customer were “you came in so low on your price it is worth the risk to see if you can pull this off even if you don’t”. That was an incredible statement of faith from our client! Sure enough, the client was correct as our development teams struggled with delivering capabilities to the schedules or at the costs committed to. As the struggles mounted in the development environment, the client team (consisting of analysts and project managers) bore the brunt of the “I told you so” comments and faced head on the frustrations of the client. As we lost the trust of the client and the inevitable end of the program became much more clear (to the client team – not sure the development team really ever felt it), the client team was fixing breakdowns in the relationship daily, but we could never overcome the breakdown in delivery of the product.
For both of these, there was a silver lining in the cloud of despair. For the first, in spending so much less on the product and by taking quite a bit more time to deliver, the internet bust occurred saving the owner and primary investor many millions of dollars that would surely have been lost if we had used a high priced team and charged forward with a more aggressive schedule. For the second, by trying to deliver an enterprise scale application on an impossible schedule at an impossible price, the customer was able to leverage that project to show intent to change to the incumbent and to force the incumbent to negotiate with more sincerity and less ego, hopefully saving millions of dollars in that process over time.
The fact that there was a silver lining eased the pain just a little after time, but every leader regardless of circumstances feels the burden of failure to an extent that’s hard to explain. Even the best of leaders at times may jump into that “impossible mission” thinking that their leadership skills can overcome the incredible constraints. When those constraints are team members not capable of achieving in support of the mission or funding limitations that prevent getting the right people or the right technologies to support the effort, then even the “best of leaders” may not be able to overcome the inevitable.
With all this being said, I’m yearning for that next impossible mission and the challenges of getting a team (probably not perfect) to achieve a result (probably not possible)! That’s where you really do learn what kind of leader you are. That’s where you really do make a difference.