GOOD TO GREAT

“The call to be a disciple-leader is a call to minister and to serve.  It is a call to lead as Christ leads.  It is leadership with a small “L”—the kind of leadership that builds and lifts and inspires through kindness and love and unselfish devotion to the Lord and His work.  It is the kind of leadership that we need at every level of every kind of organization in the world and in every ward and stake in the Church.  It is the kind of leadership you will need to build an eternal family”.  President Kim B. Clark

An entrepreneur needs to embrace the ability to lead and execute. Christ gives us the perfect example of a great leader that we can apply in all aspects of our life.

  Leadership in a company

Can a good company become great, and if so, how does that transition process occur? By applying these three MAIN elements:

                          1. Disciplined People – getting the right people in the business and then keeping them focused on excellence.

                     2. Disciplined Thought – being honest about the facts and avoiding the temptation to get sidetracked on non-core ideas.

3. Disciplined Action – realizing what is important to achieve and what isn’t.

“There is nothing wrong with pursuing a vision of greatness. After all, good-to-great companies also set out to create greatness. But, unlike the comparison companies, the good-to-great companies continually refined the path to greatness with the brutal facts of reality.” (Jim Collins)

        Developing the Right Attitudes, Habits, and Instincts:

The secret to developing the right attitudes, habits, and instincts for crisp execution is cultivating a bias toward action. Practice the following steps until they become deeply imbedded habits:

  1. Accept the mission and get started.

If offered an assignment where the objective is clear, accept it without asking for further instructions. Then take the first step.

 2. Be curious.

Most times you won’t have all the answers. Don’t see this as a sign of weakness. Instead, unleash your natural curiosity. Focus on asking the right questions first. Then seek answers.

3. Immediately sketch out a plan.

Quickly draft a provisional plan with goals, milestones and deadlines. If you don’t know enough to craft such a plan, decide how to gather the information you need. But in all cases, begin to move forward immediately.

Carly Fiorina a Former CEO, HP taught that the most important capability someone can have is the capability to ask a question and hear the answer.  “You have to celebrate new ideas, take risks all the time, try new things”.  The other important part about capability is to keep learning; to learn something every day. “People who keep learning, who keep trying new things, are vibrant”. She states a quote by Charles Darwin who said “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but those most adaptive to change.” Every entrepreneur needs to develop those skills if he or she wants to survive and be successful.

I loved this quote about Leadership by Jim Ritchie: “A true leader is a person who takes others to higher ground.” This is for me the essence of leadership.