Here is where we encounter one of the major differences often seen between entrepreneurs and manages. Entrepreneurs often are not always good manages, but many good manages are not always willing to accept the risks required to be entrepreneurs.
New ideas often come from entrepreneurs, who set the work processes in motion but sometimes lack the ability to manage them afterward. Improvements in marketing the ideas often are developed by managers. They sometimes lack the initiative of the entrepreneur, but their skills in work processes can take the company to new levels of success. Regardless leaders are innovators or early adopters of new products, new ideas and new ways of doing things.
The ability to innovate, according to Robert Metcalfe, chairperson of 3COM, “requires gambling and risk-taking,” with an inevitability of mistake.
Similarly, Robert Townsend in Up the Organization admits, “My batting average on decisions as CEO at Avis no better than .333. Two out of every three decisions I made were wrong. But my mistakes were discussed openly and most of them corrected with a little help from my friends.
Harvard Business Review encourages a company culture that is led by “failure-tolerant leaders,” as illustrated by the title of a 2003 book by well-known business authors Ralph Keyes and Richard Farson: Whoever Makes the Most Mistakes Wins: The Paradox of Innovation.
However , mistakes must be minimized because many companies are less tolerant of management mistakes than they sound. Robert Lloyd, former executive editor of New York’s Erie Times-News and assistant: managing editor of The post Standard in Syracuse, has this precaution “ From my experiences, making mistakes has hurt people. People are in power or stay in power because they make really good decisions.
The mantra you hear repeatedly from management and leadership training seminars is that you must not avoid action out of a fear of making mistakes. At least, not in the ideal company. Not only that, you also must be willing to work past operational mistakes made by employees.
Of course, you must learn from yours mistakes and move forward. Success in business is not simply stumbling around until you get lucky. However, you must keep your perspective. In Leaders: The strategies for Taking Charge, Bennins and Nanus tell us that of the 90 successful leaders they studied, “almost every false step was regarded as a learning opportunity and not as the end of the world. You will see this referenced again in this chapter as one of four competencies of leadership.
By the way. It is important to emphasize is not possible when talking about mistakes in the skills of journalism. A reporter who makes frequent factual mistake for example cannot be tolerated for long in journalism, where credibility, truthfulness and reliability must be paramount. As only on example, if an Albuquerque Journal reporter misspells a source’s name the reporter must write a letter of apology to Managing Editor Dan Herrera said any reporter who has to write many of those letters is going to end up unemployed. Some newspapers, including the Miami herald, have sent out letters to sources asking if they were quoted accurately and if a story’s facts were correct.
Enable others to act
Leaders understand better than anyone else the value of teamwork In bringing others on board to achieve their goals, they usually give careful thought about whom they invite to join them. As southwest Airlines’ Herb Kelleher puts it this way, “We’ve always believed that business can and should be fun we try not to hire people who are humorless, self-centered, or complacent, so what makes us different and in most enterprises, different is better.
Notice his use of the word. “we” The choice of that word rather than “I” helps immediately identify Kelleher as a team leader. The most effective leaders never think in terms or “I”
The best leaders build collaborative teams enabling others to act customers, suppliers, community, shareholders and its complementary businesses. All must support the vision in some way.
Rosabeth Moss Kanter, a Harvard business professor, confirms this In her research on successful innovations inside large corporations reporting. “The few projects in my study that disintegrated did so because the manger failed to build a coalition of supporters and collaborators.
A mantra in business that information is power. Ineffective leaders hoard information while effective and credible leader make sure information is shared. Kouzes and posner point out that teamwork cannot work unless information and resources are shared. Just as important as disseminating information is the skill of listening to others. True communication must be two-way “if you want people to trust you.” The leadership Challenge says. “the listening-to-talk ratio has to be in favor of listening.
Encourage the heart
This could have been in the chapter on motivation because that’s what this section is all about. Leaders must encourage the heart of their followers to persevere against inevitable frustrations, setbacks and even tedium, because it can be so difficult and that they are valuable to the company can be done many ways
Many manages mistakenly think the best way to mutative employees is by giving them pay raise, but repeated research has shown that pay often is not the prime motivator, especially for the creative types of people who work for media companies. A book , 1001 Ways to Reward Employees, makes it clear that many other things are important to employees, too.
“Everyone need to feel appreciated. Most businesses aren’t very glamorous, “Mackay points out. “If you want to improve morale a little bit among your middle managers, give them some unexpected recognition Bragging rights are just as important as money.
In up the organization Townsend writes that the simple elegance of saying thank you is “a really neglected form of compensation.
finding imaginative ways to extend recognition to people can motivate people without as Mackay says, locking the owner into “a costly and ever-escalating [salary] program.
Of Couse, you cannot buy people’s commitment with gimmicks and pats on the back. That alone is not enough to get them to want to care, to stay late or come in early, The word “want” is the key. Any good manager can get people to do work, at least to a point. But a person who can develop a manager’s goal of production efficiency someone who can do that is a leader. Such a leader will enjoy the fruits of productivity and accomplishment giving proof as “ the art of accomplishing more than then science of management says is possible
For such a leader, and the team he or she has motivated into action in a spirit of community and shared goals, anything is possible