The Strategy of Agility and Resilience.

“Strategy is the art of making use of time and space. I am less concerned about the latter than the former. Space we can recover, lost time never.” – Napoleon Bonaparte

First lets start with an old standby…from On Becoming a Leader by Warren Bennis:

• Managers administer, leaders innovate
• Managers ask how and when, leaders ask what and why
• Managers focus on systems, leaders focus on people
• Managers do things right, leaders do the right things
• Managers maintain, leaders develop
• Managers rely on control, leaders inspire trust
• Managers have a short-term perspective, leaders have a longer-term perspective
• Managers accept the status-quo, leaders challenge the status-quo
• Managers have an eye on the bottom line, leaders have an eye on the horizon
• Managers imitate, leaders originate
• Managers emulate the classic good soldier, leaders are their own person
• Managers copy, leaders show originality
• Managers administer, leaders innovate
• Managers ask how and when, leaders ask what and why
• Managers focus on systems, leaders focus on people
• Managers do things right, leaders do the right things
• Managers maintain, leaders develop
• Managers rely on control, leaders inspire trust
• Managers have a short-term perspective, leaders have a longer-term perspective
• Managers accept the status-quo, leaders challenge the status-quo
• Managers have an eye on the bottom line, leaders have an eye on the horizon
• Managers imitate, leaders originate
• Managers emulate the classic good soldier, leaders are their own person
• Managers copy, leaders show originality

In short managers supervise and control resources while making and following plans, whereas leaders transcend resources and plans by influencing and inspiring. Managers are often leaders but the converse of this does not have to be true, many talented leaders are not particularly good at supervision, stewardship or planning, but they can influence and inspire.

One of my favorite measures of a leader is the simplest one of all – leaders have followers – irrespective of title, rank or position – they have and gain followers who are inspired or influenced by what they say and how they act.

To close I will leave you with a quote from one of my favorite thinkers on the management and leadership:

“Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.” – Peter Drucker

I am a huge fan of TED talks and I am constantly looking for more video which is both educational and entertaining. Today I ran across (via browsing on my Apple TV, love that thing) a set of talks from “The New Yorker Conference Stories From the Near Future” and they hit the sweet spot for entertainment and mental stimulation.

So far I have made my way through watching:

A talk from Malcolm Gladwell on hiring and the issues with mismatches in the way we filter and assess people for new work. As always he shared ideas which really altered my way of thinking by questioning some fundamental assumptions we all make about how we discern the best candidates for jobs.

A talk from Eric Haseltine the former chief technology officer of the U.S. intelligence community. His was a really cogent talk on how we need to change our current processes and methods for dealing with the new security situations we face and how we need to focus on ideas as the new battlefield and not on being a bigger, badder elephant. I really enjoyed this talk as it showed to me that some people in our defense establishment may actually understand the nature of the opponents we face.

There were many other good talks and interviews. Check it out.

I have been thinking a lot about the Qualities and Practices I work to inculcate into my teams.  I think I have boiled them down to the following:

• Trust & Cohesion – Concord and trust amongst our team underlie everything.
• Agility – The ability to rapidly and easily re-orient our people, ideas and technology to adapt and shape our environment.
• Initiative -  The tendency to start an action, including coming up with a recommendation and giving or helping without first being requested to do so.
• Effectiveness & Efficacy  – We can quickly and efficiently realize the correct aim and focus in times of ambiguity, confusion and rapid change.
• Focus & Direction -  All other activities of the group must support it and the people conducting these activities must understand what the main effort is know that they must support it.
• Management Intent -  A concise, unambiguous statement of an assignments purpose and the desired end state. It may also include an assessment of the acceptable work effort and risk.
• Leadership & Culture – Assignments via task description and management intent in order to enable responsibility, accountability, initiative and trust. We focus on improving our culture, disseminating our ideals and best practices.
• Harmony & Communication – We work together, we ensure that we stay aligned by constantly communicating with each other, we collaborate and constantly seek to improve our means and methods.
• Amazing Projects -  We only work on projects which are amazing, therefore we make all assignments amazing.
• Responsibility & Accountability – We empower each person to be both responsible and accountable for the success of their projects and assignments. We hold them accountable by describing unambiguous outcomes via management intent and concise assignments.

The above is a work in progress, however I am generally happy with the compactness and spirit of the language. I generally think any policy worth having has to fit on a 3 by 5 card.

Many of you are probably aware of the Long Now Foundation. What you may not be aware of is that they host seminars on long term thinking, and that many of them are available online. I am particularly interested in this talk by Vernor Vinge on What Happens if the Singularity Does NOT Happen and this talk by Nassim Nicholas Taleb on our Crazy Future.

Check it out: http://www.longnow.org/projects/seminars/