Colin Powell on Leadership, Part 4

Here is a Leadership Primer from General Colin Powell, Chairman (Ret), Joint Chiefs of Staff. There are 18 Lessons, which I will spread over 4 posts. This is #4 of 4.

Lesson 14: "Great leaders are almost always great simplifiers, who can cut through the argument, debate and doubt, to offer a solution everybody can understand."

Leaders understand keeping it simple. They articulate vivid, over-arching goals and values, which they use to drive daily behaviors and choices among competing alternatives. Their visions and priorities are lean and compelling, not cluttered and buzzword-laden. Their decisions are crisp and clear, not tentative and ambiguous. They convey an unwavering firmness and consistency in their actions, aligned with the picture of the future they paint. The result: clarity of purpose, credibility of leadership, and integrity in organization.

Lesson 15: "Part 1: Use the formula P=40 to 70, in which P stands for the probability of success and the numbers indicate the percentage of information acquired. Part 2: Once the information is in the 40 to 70 range, go with your gut."

Don't take action if you have only enough information to give you less than a 40% chance of being right, but don't wait until you have enough facts to be 100% sure, because by then it is almost always too late. Today, excessive delays in the name of information-gathering breeds "analysis paralysis". Procrastination in the name of reducing risk actually increases risk.

Lesson 16: "The commander in the field is always right and the rear echelon is wrong, unless proved otherwise."

Too often, the reverse defines corporate culture. This is one of the main reasons why leaders like Ken Iverson of Nucor Steel, Percy Barnevik of Asea Brown Boveri, and Richard Branson of Virgin have kept their corporate staffs to a bare-bones minimum - how about fewer than 100 central corporate staffers for global $30 billion-plus ABB? Or around 25 and 3 for multi-billion Nucor and Virgin, respectively? Shift the power and the financial accountability to the folks who are bringing in the beans, not the ones who are counting or analyzing them.

Lesson 17: "Have fun in your command. Don't always run at a breakneck pace. Take leave when you've earned it: Spend time with your family. Corollary: surround yourself with people who take their work seriously, but not themselves, those who work hard and play hard."

Herb Kelleher of Southwest Air and Anita Roddick of The Body Shop would agree: seek people who have some balance in their lives, who are fun to hang out with, who like to laugh (at themselves, too) and who have some non-job priorities which they approach with the same passion that they do their work. Spare me the grim workaholic or the pompous pretentious "professional"; I'll help them find jobs with my competitor.

Lesson 18: "Command is lonely"

Harry Truman was right. Whether you're the CEO or the temporary head of a project team, the buck stops here. You can encourage participative management and bottom-up employee involvement, but ultimately the essence of leadership is the willingness to make the tough, unambiguous choices that will have an impact on the fate of the organization. I've seen too many non-leaders flinch from this responsibility. Even as you create an informal, open, collaborative corporate culture, prepare to be lonely.

"Leadership is the art of accomplishing more than the science of management says is possible."