There are things that work and many more that don't. Let's discuss what we've experienced . . . not our opinions . . . but actually what our days and nights as marketers, business leaders, parents, people are teaching us. Please give us a hand. Tell us about your experience with this stuff.

Tuesday, April 6, 2010

Leadership Helps Their People Win

Although most of us get hired by companies, we excel by organizing, training and guiding teams of people. And those people follow us . . .personally. We lead and they follow.

These last two years forced many of us to evaluate tough, and in some cases, terrible, decisions in order to preserve and ensure the health of these companies.

However, our success is still dependent on the performance of these people, these teams . . .personally. Companies don't really perform, people do. We may need to measure a company and even make decisions about company strategy, tactics and resourcing, but things happen exclusively because a person makes it happen.

So as executives we move through 2010, watching warily the ebb and flow of our market and the demand of our clients. But in the end our leadership and certainly our company is most measuarable not by what we have done for our company, but how our people have won. If they don't win, our company doesn't win. And then it gets, or it should, get very personal for us as leaders.

Here's the math: this is not war and we are not Generals. Our call is to be servant leaders to people who are depending on us to show them the way to the professional life they want. It can be a strange path, but there is no doubt of the expectations for where that path should lead.