A leader finds a way to understand what's important; those topics that are critical to implement--or change--by the use of leadership techniques. He or she listens carefully to all his constituencies, sifts through this pile of inputs to find the ponies, carefully defines those that are the most important or critical, and then corrals the energy, communications and execution plans necessary to create success. Your success as a leader, and the success of the enterprise, depends on doing this well. Two componenents of this approach merit emphasis.
“Critical Topics” means just that. Any business will face a laundry list, such as product costs, expense levels, product line proliferation, too many facilities, inadequate management, estranged customers, or employee morale. You can’t fix everything at once. Do the tough work of determining those several that are critical, testing against these three factors: (a) “do or die”, gotta fix this one, (b) fixability, don’t tilt at windmills, and (c) impact—including solving multiple problems with one action. Those problems can be multidimensional, and usually are. They can be somewhat complicated, and usually are. If not, they would’ve likely been fixed by now.
“Carefully Define” also means just that, thinking beyond the obvious so you attack the cause not the effect. High admin expenses may not be simply due to a bloated staff, but rather too many sku’s. High manufacturing costs may not be a design or operational problem, but rather caused by marketing promises such as lead times that are inefficiently short or catering to customers’ every possible whim. An example of both is the 2007 Dodge Nitro, available in 167,000 different combinations (color, trim, etc.) while selling about 37,000 units.
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