Get the Bus Going
One of my very favorite business books of all time is Jim Collins' "Good to Great." Every one of the main points he makes is counter-intuitive, clear, and correct. One of those points is this notion of getting the right people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus, and then and only then figuring out what direction to drive. This flies in the face of what most of us think about good leadership: that you have to cast a compelling vision and then recruit people around that vision. On the other hand, it confirms what most people have figured out about success in this day and age: that it's all about having the best talent.
But too often, leaders falls short in the implementation of this simple tenet. Note that Collins' imperative has three actions to it: 1) get the right people on the bus, 2) get the wrong people off the bus, and 3) figure out what direction to drive. We've already spoken above about how often leaders get this sequence wrong, trying to do #3 while #1 and #2 aren't yet set. But sometimes leaders fail to do #2 and/or #3 completely.
We all understand the importance of #1, and most good leaders are good leaders because they attract the right people to themselves. But then they let the wrong people hang around; they don't take care of #2. Maybe it's loyalty or lack of courage or bad judgment, but too often leaders don't get the wrong people off the bus. And the organization is thusly impaired in being great.
Even those leaders that get the right people on the bus and the wrong people off the bus can still fail, at not doing #3. A lot of leaders are self-initiating mavericks. Having chafed under bureaucracy and micro-management and structure, they've loosed themselves to their heart's content, and assume that everyone else is like them and that any semblance of bureaucracy or micro-management or structure is anathema to a work culture where people can thrive.
But you can't expect even the best people, having gotten on the bus, to then know what to do and how to succeed if you don't set at least a general course of direction for them. To use a sports analogy, you could get all the best players but you can't just put them on the field and expect them to automatically win championships. If anything, more talented people require more structure, not to make sure they're being productive but to thoughtfully and strategically put them in the best positions to work their magic. After all, as in sports, there are very few completely individual competitions: the best shooter, for example, still needs to get to his or her spot AND have someone else get them the ball, in order for them to make the shot.
And yet, all too often a leader, having surrounded himself or herself with great people, then assumes that these great people can take things from there. Why, any sort of directive from him or her would feel too much like the kind of stifling work environment that everyone's trying to escape, right? Alas, this kind of chaotic and structureless environment, far from releasing people to do great, too often frustrates people who have no guidance to know what to do, no evaluation to know if they're doing it right, and no accountability to know if what they're doing is synching with what others are doing. When this happens, you can easily have a situation in which the whole is LESS than the sum of these magnificent parts: people are either off doing their own thing, and no synergy is happening, or people are rudderless, expending energy wastefully with no one making sense of all the activity and creativity.
Whatever you're doing, that thing deserves to be done at peak efficiency. Be a leader that makes that happen, work under leaders that do the same, and find people to work for you in the same way. Otherwise, yours isn't a bus trip, it's just a stalled bus with a bunch of really great people in it that isn't going anywhere.
But too often, leaders falls short in the implementation of this simple tenet. Note that Collins' imperative has three actions to it: 1) get the right people on the bus, 2) get the wrong people off the bus, and 3) figure out what direction to drive. We've already spoken above about how often leaders get this sequence wrong, trying to do #3 while #1 and #2 aren't yet set. But sometimes leaders fail to do #2 and/or #3 completely.
We all understand the importance of #1, and most good leaders are good leaders because they attract the right people to themselves. But then they let the wrong people hang around; they don't take care of #2. Maybe it's loyalty or lack of courage or bad judgment, but too often leaders don't get the wrong people off the bus. And the organization is thusly impaired in being great.
Even those leaders that get the right people on the bus and the wrong people off the bus can still fail, at not doing #3. A lot of leaders are self-initiating mavericks. Having chafed under bureaucracy and micro-management and structure, they've loosed themselves to their heart's content, and assume that everyone else is like them and that any semblance of bureaucracy or micro-management or structure is anathema to a work culture where people can thrive.
But you can't expect even the best people, having gotten on the bus, to then know what to do and how to succeed if you don't set at least a general course of direction for them. To use a sports analogy, you could get all the best players but you can't just put them on the field and expect them to automatically win championships. If anything, more talented people require more structure, not to make sure they're being productive but to thoughtfully and strategically put them in the best positions to work their magic. After all, as in sports, there are very few completely individual competitions: the best shooter, for example, still needs to get to his or her spot AND have someone else get them the ball, in order for them to make the shot.
And yet, all too often a leader, having surrounded himself or herself with great people, then assumes that these great people can take things from there. Why, any sort of directive from him or her would feel too much like the kind of stifling work environment that everyone's trying to escape, right? Alas, this kind of chaotic and structureless environment, far from releasing people to do great, too often frustrates people who have no guidance to know what to do, no evaluation to know if they're doing it right, and no accountability to know if what they're doing is synching with what others are doing. When this happens, you can easily have a situation in which the whole is LESS than the sum of these magnificent parts: people are either off doing their own thing, and no synergy is happening, or people are rudderless, expending energy wastefully with no one making sense of all the activity and creativity.
Whatever you're doing, that thing deserves to be done at peak efficiency. Be a leader that makes that happen, work under leaders that do the same, and find people to work for you in the same way. Otherwise, yours isn't a bus trip, it's just a stalled bus with a bunch of really great people in it that isn't going anywhere.
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