What happens when your employees, your customers, your clients, your stakeholders have no confidence in your leadership or in your ability to lead?
What happens when leaders fail to lead? Now, it is quickly becoming the norm to remove those that are failing not only themselves but also the people they are directly responsible for. Those key stakeholders that are critical to the existence of the position of leadership they have been charged with filling, maintaining, and grow.
On Monday, November 9, 2015, the University of Missouri president vacated his position of authority and leadership after failing to properly address, handle, and get out in front of the controversy over “race relations at the school’s main campus”.
The ability to address the good, bad, and ugly is what every leader must do as a leader. While everyone, loves addressing the good, it is the bad and ugly that must be addressed. It is what leaders wanted to do and what they are expected to do. There is no shirking the responsibility of deal with ALL issues whether they go against what they believe or not. By dealing with a bad issue is no way means a leader has failed. It is when that leader fails to address the bad issues that he has failed as a leader.
In most cases, such as the case of the University of Missouri President, his followers and primary stakeholders (the Students) have lost confidence in his leadership and in his ability to do the right thing. The right thing in this case, was getting out in front of the matter at hand.
Now while it may be too late for the U of Missouri President, but it might not be too late for you. If you are not getting out in front of problems, you are most certainly heading in the direction of the dinosaurs, University Presidents that believe the only way to deal with real issues is to deal with them by sticking your head in the ground, and hoping it all goes away.
Real Leaders don’t have time for that kind of nonsense.
Real Leaders KNOW the only way to save time, energy, and manpower is to face the issues head on as quickly, as concisely, and out in front as much as possible.
However, if that is the only way you know how to do business then please don’t even consider yourself a leader. Heck, don’t even call yourself a manager. Call for someone to come pick you up because you are done here.
What happens when the unexpected happens? As a business owner/leader it is your responsibility to make certain that you are doing everything you can to avoid the unexpected.
You practice, you train, you simulate, then you practice, train, and simulate, again.
However, if it is going to happen it will happen. Then what do you do?
You move on. You press forward all the while doing what you can to avoid it from happening again.
If you haven’t heard this exact same thing just happened to the WWE. Yes, World Wrestling Entertainment, Inc. that WWE.
This past weekend, the WWE World Heavyweight Champion had the most unexpected thing happen to him. The WWE’s number one guy, the champ, the top dog, Seth Rollins sustain a knee injury to end all knee injuries, at a WWE Live Event in Dublin, Ireland. This guy tore his right ACL, MCL and medial meniscus. If you know anything about knee injuries, most people that have a tear, in their knee, it is usually one or the other. It is very rare to have all three at the same time. It does happen and it did.
Now, the WWE World Heavyweight Champion will be out for the next six to nine months. That means that he will NOT be able to defend his title. This means no championship fights. No Main Event match on the WWE’s monthly pay-per-view events. Low attendance at the venues hosting any WWE event because the champ won’t be there.
OR WILL IT?
The WWE jumped out in front of this situation and has opted to hold a “tournament” to determine a new champion. That’s good thinking and planning on the part of the WWE. They had a situation occur, a contingency plan was in place and when the time came to implement they were ready. While it will be a long road to recovery for the current Champ, it will be a new and exciting time for the rest of the WWE as it is on its quest to find a new World Heavyweight Champion.
BUSINESS OWNER / BUSINESS LEADERS LISTEN UP!
Are you prepared for such situations? What happens when your Number One Performer is suddenly sidelined? Are you prepared to fill in the gap(s) that the loss will most certainly create?
For example, you run an Insurance Agency. You know Home, Auto, Life, Farm, Business Insurance. That kind of insurance agency. Your Number One Agent is suddenly rushed to emergency hangnail surgery and will be out for two weeks. Who is going to take care of the policyholders during that time? Certainly not the receptionist.
NO! NOT THE RECEPTIONIST!
If you said the Receptionist then you most certainly don’t have a plan. Well, that is if your Receptionist isn’t a Certified Insurance Agent. Otherwise, good call.
Seriously, so long as you have a contingency plan it does not matter who you select. What matters is that you prepare now and not when it is too late.
Growing up I had always wanted to do two things: Serve my country and own my own business (to be an entrepreneur). Little did I know one day I would end up doing both. What else I did not know is that one helped me do the other. As a young Infantry soldier, I found myself quickly immersed in a world that was foreign to me. All those rules and regulations, inspections, road marches, and camaraderie that my fellow soldiers and I experienced helped make me the person I am today. What I did not know then is that one day I would become the leader of others. It was not by choice but a natural outcome of the training the US Army gave me, what I did on my own, during and after the Army, in gaining the skills, knowledge, and experience.
However, on the path to becoming an entrepreneur there were a few things that started to look familiar as many of the things that I encountered in the Army were popping up. The familiarity of the situations was almost too much to avoid.
Photo taken David in 1987 at Wildflecken Training Area in West Germany.
Expect the Unexpected
No amount of training can prepare you for the unexpected. However, the US Army does a great job of training its soldiers for just about anything. From a simple engine breakdown of a two and half ton truck to an all-out counter-attack by the enemy, the US Army just about has all the bases covered. That way when the unexpected happens you are prepared. It is kind of like keeping a case of water and a bug out bag in the trunk of your car during hurricane season, you might not need it but when a hurricane strikes, you are ready.
The same goes for running a business. While you know that you are going to need paper for the copier, why not buy an extra case, you know for just in case. The same goes for backing up your data. Planning for when all your staff catches the flu. The list goes on and on but let us hope you never need it but if you ever encounter the unexpected contingency planning (that is what it is called) will see you through until things get back to normal.
By planning and preparing, as a business owner, I am ready to face whatever may come our way. What makes all of that contingency planning even better is communicating that plan to everyone in your organization. By having shared the information of the plan you have now empowered your staff to do the right thing in just about any situation, expected or unexpected.
Change Happens
Heraclitus once said, “The only thing that is constant is change.” If there is one thing that is certain about the US Army or any other branch of the Armed Forces it is that that change is always happening. Sometimes, change might just crawl slower than a slug on a wet blade of grass and at other times, change comes slamming down on you faster than a palette of bricks that has lost its restraining straps as its being hoisted up a 10 story building.
While there is good change and there is bad change, 99 times out of a 100, for an Infantryman such as myself, change is seldom good. That is when you have to roll with the punches. Whether it is spending the entire day digging foxholes only to find out that you were digging five feet away from where they should have been dug. Guess what? You spend the entire night digging the new foxholes.
As a businessperson, the sooner you understand that every day brings new change, the sooner you can get on with living your life with some sense of sanity. The reality is there is nothing anyone can do to prevent change from occurring. Change comes in many shapes and sizes; the trick is to recognize how to deal with each change. You have to deal with it because ignoring it and hoping it will go away will do nothing more that make it that much harder to deal with bigger changes that are coming (and they are coming).
Make A Plan (Be Prepared to Throw It Away)
General Dwight D. Eisenhower made a great observation about plans and planning, “In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.” That about sums it up when it comes to plans or Operations Orders (OPORD as we called them). The entire command staff, (Adjutant, Intelligence Officer, Operations Officer, and Logistics Officer) would work with the commander to put a plan together. Ideally, this plan would cover all the bases on how to execute a mission from time to launch to time to return. In a very well thought out Operations (OP) Order all conceivable bases would be covered. It would be broken down to the very last detail. If most OP Orders were not classified, they would make for some great military reading that would in most cases rival Clancy, Coyle or Griffin.
However, one thing was certain. The moment the plan is put into action, it is just a matter of time before something happens that makes the plan worth less than the paper it was printed on. That’s right, the moment the bullets start to fly, the plan flies into the trashcan. Of course, there were some things in that plan that were useful and priceless like who was going to re-fuel vehicles where and when, what the radio frequencies are, and most of all where the beans and bullets could be found and some other useful stuff.
See the thing is that while we are using our plan the enemy (the competition) have their own plan that they are implementing. Why did it not ever occur someone to give a copy of the OPORD to the enemy to ensure that we were all one the same page of the battle plan?
The same goes for business. Sure, you can plan and prepare for the greatest opening day sale ever in the history of modern commerce but the printer cannot deliver your promotional items until the day after the sale, what then? Your competition decides to undercut your prices for one weekend only, your opening weekend, what then? Planning is one thing but the plan is something completely different.
You Are Part of a Team
From the first day of basic training to the day your term of service expires, you are part of a team. There was no introductory period, no time to get to know each other, nothing like what happens in the modern workplace. Immediately, you are thrown into the deep end with 90 or 120 other individuals. In my case, it was all males as we were going through Infantry training which has always been a male only Military Occupational Specialty.
Once assigned to our 30-man platoon, the Drill Sergeants made it clear that were in it together. We are a 30-man platoon and not a platoon of 30 men. This meant that we had to understand that we were a unit. We had to act as one cohesive unit. When we failed to act as a cohesive unit, we were held accountable together. One person screwed up that meant that we all screwed up. When the team screwed up, the team was punished. Then again, when we succeeded we were rewarded as a collective.
Collective punishment and reward made us hold each other accountable to the team and to ourselves as individuals. By being put in a team situation that early in the game (Basic Training & Advanced Training) made the adjusting to Army life that much more hectic and stressful but that’s the objective of being in the military. You have to hurry up and become a team because the enemy is not going to wait for you to become a cohesive fighting force. The enemy is always looking for those kinds of weaknesses to exploit. They can sniff out when a team is scrambling in 30 different directions and then it strikes.
The same applies for any business entrepreneur. The competition is not worried about you until you are nipping at its heels. In the meantime, your competition does not know you exist and whether you admit it or not is eating you for lunch. As someone who is in business, you do not have time to wait for people that do not get it, refuse to get it, or wonder what there is to get. All or any of those three do nothing good for the development of a sound, functional, and cohesive team. Your team must be ready to roll at a moment’s notice. However, it can only roll out and deploy knowing that it can meet the objective and defeat it. If one member of the team cannot do it then the entire team cannot be successful. Thus, you are NOT successful because as a leader you are still part of the team. You are part of the team you built. So build it with the right people to make the right team.
Hurry Up and Wait
Aside from quickly assimilating into the Army, life there was one other thing that we quickly learned: to hurry up and wait. We would wake up at 5:30 a.m. get down to the Physical Training (PT) field by 5:50 a.m. only to wait 10 minutes for the playing of Reveille and the raising of the colors. Then it was go, go, go until 12:00 p.m. where we moved to Mess Hall (Yes, we called them Mess Halls back then.) where we stood and waited in line to get to the serving stations only to wolf down lunch in five minutes. Then we would go outside and wait for everyone in the unit to finish eating.
Prior to deployments, we would hurry up and get to the railhead to load all our vehicles onto rail cars, which was another exercise in hurry up, and wait. Sure we would be there with all our vehicles and gear but for many of us it would be hours of waiting before we would get the opportunity to load our vehicles. Except for those fortunate to be at the head of the line it was quick to load. However, when it came time to unload those that loaded first well it just became their time to wait. So goes karma, yes even in the US Army.
As an entrepreneur, you want things to be done yesterday. Sure your vendors, suppliers, contractors and other stakeholders will do things on their own schedule thus forcing you to hurry up (to get things ready) and wait. All that “hurry up and wait” does is hone our patience. The ability to be patient as an entrepreneur is something that goes against our nature. However, there are times, things that we have no say in the matter, and we must hurry up and wait.
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David G. Guerra is a US Army Veteran, Small Business Entrepreneur, and Author (Fiction & Non-Fiction). David served with the US Army Berlin Brigade 110 miles behind the Iron Curtain during the Cold War. David also spent 17 years working for the State of Texas in the Information Technology field and successfully earning his Bachelor and Master degree in Business Administration along the way. Now working in the private sector has given David the opportunity to write and publish his first two of three books on leadership; “The Walking Leader” and “Great To Follow” and three historical fiction books set in Occupied West Berlin (“Doughboy City”, “Air Bridge Berlin”, and “Spandau Guard”) with more of both genres to come.
What happens when the unexpected happens? As a business owner/leader it is your responsibility to make certain that you are doing everything you can to avoid the unexpected.