• Where do our actions and our words diverge?
• What are the most difficult ethical and moral issues our employees face and have we given them enough guidance on how to make decisions about them?
A leader’s inspiration comes more from examples than speeches. Leading means making difficult decisions and answering difficult questions—that’s what the values discussion should focus on.
Strategy
Strategy is another area where big words are used with little or no impact. Our strategies are often poorly articulated and fail to address the well-known issues that face our companies. Most strongly resemble New Year’s resolutions: “grow,” “provide amazing services to clients,” “develop our team,” “improve our operational productivity.”
Instead, we should ask:
• Why did we not grow last year?
• What are we not doing for clients that we should?
• Why did we suffer turnover, and why are the skills of the team not growing?
The great David Maister wrote an article he later turned into a book, Strategy and the Fat Smoker. There, he observed that most individuals know exactly what they need to do and change—to quit smoking and lose weight, for example. But the obvious rarely turns into the realistic for them—or for organizations. “Real strategy,” he writes, “lies not in figuring out what to do, but in devising ways to ensure” we do it.