There are seemingly endless books and articles on “leadership”. Since time is such a rare commodity for all of us, I wanted to put together some very brief and practical leadership essentials. So, I am putting together this little series where I will cover one “essential” each session.

Leadership Essential #1 – Great Leaders Have a Plan

I remember my first “major” leadership responsibility very clearly. I was asked by the CEO to take responsibility for a company that they had just acquired, making it a new division within the company. I would like to look back on this decision and believe that this appointment was due to my clearly demonstrated leadership skills, but in reality the company being acquired was in such bad shape and everyone else was so busy, the CEO likely thought that I probably couldn’t do any worse!

The first day I walked into the building, there was great excitement and I was scared to death. I got the management team together for a meeting and they all asked “what are we going to do?”. Isn’t that the question that we all fear in leadership? Where to the great leaders get their fantastic plans?

Great plans are created by having a great methodology. There is no pre-packaged plan that is going to solve your specific challenge. However, if you have a great methodology in place to peel away the massive onion of data one layer at a time, you can quickly determine where the greatest challenges (with the greatest benefits) reside. THAT is the key to creating a great plan.

There are LOTS of books on various proven methodologies. Don’t overcomplicate the process. Here is my abbreviated methodology:

• Understand the higher level objective (profitability, market penetration, revenue, customer retention, whatever)
• Engage the people who KNOW the data. Communicate the goal and what data is required to build the plan.
• Use real data to identify the top 2 or 3 major hurdles. Don’t get bogged down figuring out what hurdle #47 is, it is meaningless.
• Present the findings and the “PLAN” to everyone involved in solving the problem (that means everyone).
• Define metrics to monitor success and clear review milestones.
• At milestone reviews, realistically evaluate progress and ADJUST PLAN if needed.
• REPEAT