The Daily Drucker: April 10 – Crisis and Leadership

Leadership is a foul-weather job

The most successful leader of the twentieth century was Winston Churchill.  But for twelve years, from 1928 to Dunkirk in 1940, he was totally on the sidelines, almost discredited – because there was no need for a Churchill.  Things were routine or, at any rate, looked routine.  When the catastrophe came, thank goodness he was available.  Fortunately or unfortunately, the one predictable thing in any organization is the crisis.  That always comes.  That’s when you do depend on the leader.

The most important task of an organization’s leader is to anticipate crisis.  Perhaps not to avert it, but to anticipate it.  To wait until the crisis hits is abdication.  One has to make the organization capable of anticipating the storm, weathering it, and in fact, being ahead of it.  You cannot prevent a major catastrophe, but you can build an organization that is battle-ready, that has high morale, that knows how to behave, that trusts itself and where people trust one another.  In military training, the first rule is to instill soldiers with the trust in their officers, because without trust they won’t fight.

Hon PM Moana Carcasses and his crew Ian Wilson 1'st PA, Johnson Naviti Acting DG of PMO and MP Hosea Nevu, returning to the Police vessel after launching the extension of the VNPF Agri-Superannuation account and IMMS pilot, as well as the National Organic Certification Strategy for Coconuts and Cocoa on Malo, 4/4/2014  The national strategy is bold challenge for current VanGov and designed to eradicate agricultural poverty in the coconut sector by 2016.

 ACTION POINT: Confront the major problems facing your organization.  Communicate their essence frankly and fully.  Gather support for taking the steps necessary to solve them.

                                                                                  

  Managing the Non-Profit Organization

Quoted from The Daily Drucker, page 112

 

The Daily Drucker: April 9 – Absence of Integrity

An executive should be a realist; and no one is less realistic than the cynic.

Integrity may be difficult to define, but what constitutes lack of integrity is of such seriousness as to disqualify a person for a managerial position.  A person should never be appointed to a managerial position if his vision focuses on people’s weaknesses rather than their strengths.  The person who always knows exactly what people cannot do, but never sees anything they can do, will undermine the spirit of her organization.  An executive should be a realist; and no one is less realistic than the cynic.

            A person should not be appointed if that person is more interested in the question “Who is right?” than the question “What is right?”  To ask “Who is right?” encourages subordinates to play it safe, if not to play politics.  Above all, it encourages subordinates to “cover up” rather than to take corrective action as soon as they find out that they have made a mistake. 

Joel Tovor, Vanuatu National Provident Fund Santo Manager, joining the VCMB Leadership group on the new VNPF/VCMB initiative for grower Agri-superannuation accounts in Vanuatu. Port Olry, East Santo, 1 April 2014.

Management should not appoint a person who considers intelligence more important than integrity.  It should never promote a person who has shown that he or she is afraid of strong subordinates.  It should never put into a management job a person who does not set high standards for his or her own work.

ACTION POINT:  Define integrity.  Work on those attributes of integrity that you require in a new employee.

Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices

Quoted from The Daily Drucker, page 111

The Daily Drucker: April 8 – Leadership is Responsibility

Not enough generals were killed

All effective leaders I have encountered – both those I worked with and those I merely watched – Know four simple things: a leader is someone who has followers; popularity is not leadership, results are; leaders are highly visible, they set examples; leadership is not a rank, privilege, titles or money, it is responsibility.

 

Vanuatu Livestock Vision Launch, June 2013 - All Industry Stakeholders focused on creating an enabling environment and to work together to raise stock levels to 500 000 animals by 2025.  Vanuatu is famous for its quality beef and we expect 2014 to see the first certified organic beef exports in partnership with Aufferville Farm, Valpac, Vanuatu Cattle Company and Australian Organic Meats.

            When I was in my final high school years, our excellent history teacher – himself a badly wounded war veteran – told each of us to pick several of a spate of history books on World War I and write a major essay on our selection.  When we discussed these essays in class, one of my fellow students said, “Every one of these books says that the Great War was a war of total military incompetence.  Why was it?”  Our teacher did not hesitate a second but shot right back, “Because not enough generals were killed; they stayed away behind the lines and let the others so the fighting and dying.”  Effective leaders delegate, but they do not delegate the one thing that will set the standard.  They do it.

The Leader of the Future

The Essential Drucker

Quoted from The Daily Drucker, page 110

The Daily Drucker: April 7 – Base Leadership on Strength

The distance between the leaders and the average is a constant.

In human affairs, the distance between the leaders and the average is a constant.  If leadership performance is high, the average will go up.  The effective executive knows that it is easier to raise the performance of one leader than to raise the performance of the whole mass.  She therefore makes sure that she puts into the leadership position, the person who has the strength to do the outstanding, the pace-setting job.  This always requires focus on the one strength of a person and the dismissal of the weakness as irrelevant unless they hamper the full deployment of the available strength.

           

Malo Farmers and schoolchildren being addressed by  VanGov during the extension of the VCMB Information, Marketing and Management System to Malo and the launch of a National 3'rd Party Agricultural Certification program to ensure the eradication of agricultural poverty in Vanuatu through the organic certification of 10 000 mt of copra production by 2016.  The combination of commercil, private sector organic premiums of 5000 vatu per mt, combined with VNPF Agri-superannuation accounts creating savings, micro-finance, medial and life insurance for growers will create a strong, positive and organic Agri-business enabling environment for all stakeholders to engage.

 The task of an executive is not to change human beings.  Rather, as the Bible tells us in the parable of the talents, the task is to multiply the performance capacity of the whole by putting to use whatever strength, whatever health, whatever aspiration there is in individuals.

ACTION POINT: To raise the performance of a business unit, put a strong leader at the helm.

                                                            The Effective Executive

Quoted from The Daily Drucker, page 109