5.15.80: THE 80% & Rules of Leadership - WILLIAM EASTMAN

Today we start Discipline #3 on How You Professionalize the Business - specifically Leadership and Management. Our first show tahes the topic of Leadership and brings together centuries of research and application to a few simple rules you can follow. Everything to day and next week on Management  are time tested.
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Introduction
​We introduced the 5.15.80 Model at the beginning of the Season. It was a combination of research into small business performance and our practical experience from the last 2 decades. You could go to any area around the global with a market based economy and randomly select 1,000 companies, here is the distribution you would find: 5% or 50 companies that own their markets, 15% or 150 companies that are making money, and 80% or 800 companies that are barely surviving.

This series is about how to move from one level up and our concern in this series is the 80%, not how you get here - that story would be too ugly. The focus now is how to create a long-term future for the business and join the 15%.

LISTEN > ENGAGE > APPLY

Show Objectives
We are going to cover the 3 methods of Professionalizing the Business required in the early stages to take it to the next level.

Disciplines to Date

• Discipline #1: Bring Processes Under Control
• Discipline #2: Distinctify Your offer
• Discipline #3: Professionalize Leadership & Management

Key Issues - Owner Perspective:

1. How do I leave the business into the future - what is required of me?

What You Need to Know
I spent several years running a leadership and management program for supervisors, managers, and executives. The following list is a summation of that experience and growing several companies as an executive. Once you have started developing your skills for the role, here are some rules for leading and managing.

What You Need to Do
Rules of Leadership - The Leading of People

1. When in Charge, Lead. Nothing destroys your ability to lead more than not taking charge. If you have the position people expect you to lead. When given a position of authority you have a legitimate right to give direction and provide support, do it or lose it! Even Position Power can be fleeting.
2. Unity of Command. This is a military rule that works in the business world. First everybody should have only one boss. Reporting to multiple people will run people ragged with conflicting demands and kills accountability because it sets up “lets you and them fight”. Second there is nothing wrong with people in the organizational chart disagreeing, in fact it is healthy. However, when you leave the office, everyone must speak with one voice. Airing your differences with the workforce hurts morale and portrays leadership doesn’t know what it is doing.
3. Chain of Command. This is my second military rule. An open door policy for the people working for you is fine. If they work for somebody that reports to you, make that person handle the problem. If you jump over the organizational chart or allow people to run around it - the only outcome is conflict and loss of accountability.
4. Be What You Expect. Role model the behaviors you expect. Nothing turns people off more than conveying the attitude of “do as I say, not as I do”. This is challenging in family based businesses. Just because somebody is a member of the family (or connected) doesn’t mean they are above the rules. If you allow this double standard, there is no real accountability.
5. Treat Everybody as an Individual. Each of us is different with a complex mix of attitudes and personal characteristics. The essential questions to ask and answer is “does the person have the ability, does the person have the willingness” to do the job. Each of these require different treatment.

Next Week - Part 2: Discipline 3 of 5.15.80: Professionalize Leadership & Management - Rules of Management

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