Have you ever noticed how proverbs come in matching pairs, like “Look before you leap” and “He who hesitates is lost”?  The wisdom is in the combination. The hard part is figuring out which side to act on in each situation.

I favor the word ‘Prudent’ to describe the best leadership approach.

prudent (ˈpruːdənt)  (Adjective)

1. discreet or cautious in managing one’s activities; circumspect

2. practical and careful in providing for the future

3. exercising good judgment or common sense

[from Latin prūdēns far-sighted, contraction of prōvidens acting with foresight; see provident]

The key to being able to exploit opportunities when they become available, especially when you perceive them before most others do, is to guard against the downside.

In your personal life, be prepared for the worst that can happen.  Keep an emergency fund. Develop relationships.  Pay for maintenance.  Buy insurance.  Having two is one and one is zero for truly essential items. You don’t have to become a conspiracy nut to understand the value of a few days of food and water plus provisions to sustain your family for a few days when the power goes out. 

In your business operations, consider cross-training and bench strength for essential work.  Backups and spare inventory.  A cash flow buffer.  A second means for managing payments to suppliers and receive income from customers. 

You might not grow as fast, but you’re unlikely to be out of the game entirely.

Oh… and don’t be concerned about what others may say about this.  Prudent people don’t mind a little teasing. 

Developing leaders need practical experiences beyond “book learning.”  In general, every experience which helps them sharpen problem analysis, project leadership, persuasion, and presentation skills is a win – these are the little hinges upon which big doors swing. Here are ten ways to develop the leadership potential of the people your sphere of influence. 

1. Give them recommended books, articles, and podcasts to study.  Tell them why you think the content is valuable for them.
2. Ask them to explore a new area and report back to you and others.
3. Delegate a portion of your work (pick something relatively routine for you now, even if it’s difficult for them at first). 
4. Ask them to run one of “your” meetings (e.g., a team meeting or project meeting).  This gives them practice.  You get to step up and out of the meeting to think more about what is going on (and especially what’s not being done or said).
5. Ask them to sub for you in a meeting where you have a conflict.  They’ll need you to give context and coaching.
6. Ask them to review an existing procedure and make recommendations on how it might be improved.  This can be individual work, or an effort which requires them to get insights from others.
7. Give them opportunities to take assessment tools like DiSC and Strength Finders.  Review the results with them.
8. Ask them to co-lead a project with someone who has more experience, as an intentional ‘apprenticeship’ effort. 
9. Arrange for another leader to provide them with coaching on a skill, or mentoring in an area where you may not have as much experience.
10. Share your work stories with them – good, bad, and ugly – pointing out what you learned.  Explicitly say, “I’m telling you this story because you have leadership potential and can learn from my experiences.” 

A pattern common to declining organizations is that experienced and senior people who serve as good mentors to the up-and-coming talent exit the organization.  Sometimes it’s because of downsizing and restructuring, sometimes these critical people simply have had enough and choose to work elsewhere, or retire earlier than they might otherwise have.  Whatever the reason, you look around and “suddenly” there is a dearth of experienced mentors actively working in the organization.   

This has a natural tendency to create a weaker set of leaders in the coming years.  Leaders are brought in from the ‘outside’ because there are fewer qualified leaders in the internal pipeline.   

Yes, I’m oversimplifying.  There are many factors involved here.  It’s necessary and right for organizations to bring in different leaders when a big change is needed.   

Yet I’m confident that a leading indicator of organizational health for the next decade is the size and quality of your experienced mentoring class.   

Note: this is from a draft chapter from my upcoming book about influencing the next ten generations.

…

Some people say what the world needs is education.  Many people have said that what the world needs is love.  There’s truth in both. 

In terms of influence, what the world needs are difference-makers. 

Influence is about being a difference-maker.

Influence is about living a life that others respect, admire, and see reasons to emulate.

Influence is about communicating through example: words, actions, creating, serving.

Can you guarantee your influence in the near-term or long-term?  No.  It can be frustrating to see people (apparently) not responding to your influence, or flat out rejecting you.  It can be frustrating when we feel our sphere of influence is small.  We must not let these realities deter us from seeking to be a person of influence.

It’s tempting to compare yourself to others.  It’s discouraging to look at goofy videos that get millions of views in five days while your meaningful content gets 94 views in a week.  One man, a genuine scholar, said to me, “Hell, the Kardashians are famous for nothing more than having big butts and being famous!”  Another acquaintance, who has poured his life into youth soccer, commented to me that he doubts any of the kids will remember his name in 15 years.  Our aim must be to do our part and trust the results will come.  Influence is an emergent property of living a good life.

Influence must be rooted in hope.  Yes, people are stupid and foolish.  Yes, your excellent ideas and messages and recommendations often fall on deaf ears.  Yes, your own sinfulness damaged relationships at times and undermined trust with people you love, which makes it harder to have positive influence with them.  Yes, a gazillion other people seem to be more influential than you think you are.  Yes, you struggle to find the right words in the moment (and replay those events a thousand times afterward).  Yes, some wretched people have bought and finagled their way into positions of power. Yes, you’re impatient.  Yes, your ego has occasionally bested you. Yes, people have said things to you which discourage you, and you’ve run into barriers. Yes, you’ve been lonely.  Continue to fight the valiant fight anyway.  Continue to believe that living a life of influence is worthwhile and rewards are coming, however delayed.  Find running mates in the race. Continue to “strain forward to what lies ahead” (Philippians 3:13).

My recommendation is this:  Don’t measure your influence against others, and heavily weight the long-term outcomes of living a good life over what’s going on today. 

Sometime people get tripped up by thinking of influence as ‘motivating people.’

A personal story… Some years ago, I was asked to be on a panel discussion at the end of a supervisor training session. I scooted into the conference room just in time and took my designated seat at the front of the room. 

The first question that came to me was from a younger lady: “How do you motivate people?” I replied simply, “You can’t.” 

There were a few chuckles, and then the laugher spread. I noticed the HR facilitator at the back of the room put her hand over her mouth. The young lady smiled and pointed at a spot over my head.

I turned to look behind me and realized I was sitting directly underneath a big poster titled “How to Motivate People.”

I laughed and explained my view:

“All motivation is intrinsic. You can’t affect something intrinsic in person directly. You can provide new information. You can give them an alternative frame of reference. You can create incentives for behaviors you prefer, and disincentives for behaviors you don’t prefer. These are all indirect means of influence. Their motivation is 100% their decision. The best leaders tap into their pre-existing motivation. It’s like stepping in front of a parade and helping the parade make turns and go a bit faster.”

Persuasion is an element of influence.  The main factors in persuasion (above and beyond the content of your statements and stories) are

• Reciprocation
• Commitment and consistency
• Social Proof
• Liking
• Authority
• Scarcity

(I refer you to Robert Cialdini’s books “Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion”  and “Pre-suasion” for a master class in these factors.  He explains the psychology behind them.  You’ll never look at advertising and sales pitches the same way again!)

Persuasion is a craft – a combination of learned skills and art to produce something beautiful and useful – which contributes to our ability to influence.  Most people who seek to be more influential should work on the craft of persuasion.

Communication is another craft of influence.  Here I’m referring to using our voice, words, and artistry to share messages.  The mindset of sharing is different than telling. We all have points of view, ideas, and stories.  Vocal range, silence, pauses, body language, and imagery are part and parcel of the craft. There are learnable skills in sharing them effectively.  Communication is also a lifelong craft.

Influence is not manipulation.  Manipulation is coercion without violence (though it may include the threat of violence).   I’m not advocating that we as individuals should sanction manipulation in our plan to be influential.  The people who are famous for being notorious were master manipulators of the people around them.  Don’t emulate their methods.

Authenticity is a popular word now.  It’s not a bad word, but I still prefer the word Integrity.  A person can be an authentic devious, manipulative, arrogant ignoramus and liar.  Integrity comes to English from the Latin word integritatem which is translated in old literature as soundness, wholeness, completeness, and blamelessness.  My ancestors stressed that integrity means saying what you mean and meaning what you say.  My Scoutmaster told me “Make promises carefully, because you must keep them.”   Integrity and influence are soul-mates.

I’m pleased to announce that my latest book is now available on Kindle.  In “How to Positively Influence the Next Ten Generations” I explore

• You have more influence than you think
• What could happen and who will thrive in the next 300 years
• A systematic way to catalog your strengths and experiences and identify who you should serve
• My recommendations for increasing your influence
• How to stay on your desired vector

It’s been very helpful to several colleagues and now I want to make it available to many. 

Two readers have contacted me recently asking for input and ideas related to creating a bigger initiative with their good ideas; one is Christian discipleship, the other more business-development.   

This is the general problem of creating/fostering a movement, or a formal institution – a human entity which is bigger than you, and/or outlasts you.   

Movements have their time.  Even the best movements will not last — see Ecclesiastes 3:1-8.  Movements usually grow quickly and die faster.  

No one person designs or controls a movement, though a single personal event can spark them.  Movement leaders occasionally make claims about ‘designing’ or ‘directing’ them, but I don’t see that in historical examples.  Movements sometimes destroy the initial leaders, too (i.e., the origin of the French Revolution).  Movements are vulnerable to being exploited by people who don’t care about the movement but are happy to take advantage of them (i.e., The Tea Party and BLM in recent memory in the US).  

There is a correlation between movements and tribes.  Tribes pre-exist movements, and the people who participate in movements often come from sympatico tribes.  You can’t engineer a tribe but you can find them and get in front of them.  You can’t will a tribe or a movement into being. (See Seth Godin’s excellent book “Tribes” for the best information on this.)   

It’s important to distinguish movements and mobs.  Both can be sparked. Neither requires a leadership design pattern. Anger and fear can be present in both.  Mobs are more mindless and bring forth awful behaviors that individuals would unlikely exhibit.   

Institutions are quite different than movements.  There are some examples of movements being converted to an institution but they’re so different that it’s a rare event.  Institutions are structural groups with specific mission, principles, and management practices.  They’re consciously designed to work without the originators.   Examples of institutions are schools, denominations, paramilitary groups, social clubs (e.g., Rotary), and service communities (e.g., YMCA, pet shelters).  

Institutions require endowment funding and cash flow.  They need to clarify and celebrate their purpose as people get introduced, participate more and more – with recognizable milestones and ‘graduations’ – and often training and practice at whatever the institution is focused upon.   

Institutions work on the longer game, whereas movements are about this week or next.  Institutions can’t wing it or fluidly change direction easily.  The best institutions create roots and legacy.  Institutions shape people and events in ways that will be felt for generations.  This power of institutions is at the heart of civilization.  We care deeply when institutions are corrupted or flail.  

I don’t know how to teach someone to consciously plan and begin a movement.  I’m not sure it’s possible.  I can think of several examples where people were terribly harmed because they wanted to ‘force’ a movement to begin.   

Starting an institution has been done successfully many times.  My observation: Top-down programs with broad scope rarely succeed and are always inefficient.  They tend toward self-protecting bureaucracies that extract more and more of what’s put in, with less and less delivered.   

I believe you’ll have more success creating institutions by working patiently within our sphere of influence and trusting God to manage the scope and scale.  First rule of beginning an institution: It’s not about you. Be firm on principles and flexible on tactics.  Get something working at a small scale before you try to expand rapidly. Demonstrate your program approach helps 1, 10, and 30 people.  This helps you define who the institution is for, and especially who it’s not for. Don’t make your institution utterly dependent on a specific technology which could disappear or drastically change in the future.  You might be an important leader to launch an institution; Getting the right 2^nd, 3^rd, and 10^th people on board is crucial.  Seek complementary strengths and people willing to challenge assumptions.  Design and implement practices as soon as possible so that it no longer depends on you.  

Persistence matters.  Building anything worthwhile takes time.  There are many 10 and 20 year “overnight successes.”  There will always be a significant gap between cause and effect, investment and payoff.  One of the basic laws of human systems is that the more you push on a system the harder it will push back.  Change happens more frequently through flanking maneuvers and “blue ocean” strategies than direct assaults.   

Repairing or reforming institutions is more challenging than building them.  The past and present create momentum which is difficult to overcome.  Almost always new leadership is required.  A significant number of people need to behave differently – and most people will strongly resist “being changed.”  There are plenty of people who will give you advice about “change management.”  The truth is that you can’t manage change.  You can give people new information, create new incentives, and encourage them to make changes.   

Businesses are more successful at reformation than others usually because of massive economic incentives to pivot to new models and markets.  Even then many fail. Most non-profit reformations require key people from an institution to start another one with similar purpose or aims, in part because the status quo usually isn’t threatening enough to get a critical mass of leaders to behave differently.

Let me illustrate this last part – the difficulty of changing an institution which is still partially effective – by discussing the diseases which plague our primary grain crops and cause billions of dollars of losses annually.  Diseases can greatly reduce harvestable yields, but the plants are still successful in producing some seeds.  The plants aren’t doing as well they would without the disease, but the fact that they still produce seeds reduces the evolutionary adaptation pressure.  These key crops are relatively slow to evolve disease defenses because the threat is short of existential extinction. The disease has no “incentive” to evolve to lethal efficiency and kill all their host plants. 

In the same way, institutions which are partially effective – even far less than their critics expect them to be – get something done.  It’s truly difficult and lengthy work to repair or reform an institution from within, so usually only incremental improvements will be justified.

…

If you desire to criticize an institution by creating something better, I suggest you ask and answer these questions:

• What sacred cows will I slay?
• What dominant institution do I aim to displace?
• What groups am I disrupting?
• Which people will be furious with me?
• What price am I willing to pay?
• What grievous errors and sins must I avoid to see this through?

For which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it? (Luke 14:48)

Next, who are the gatekeepers?  Who and what are they protecting? What do they optimize for? Can you work with them, or (more likely) will you need to work around them?  Every institution has an existing set of incentive structures. 

Do not undergo institution building lightly.

Information abounds; we’re frankly awash in information to the point of noise. 

Leadership and management are crafts – a combination of learned skills and art to create something useful and beautiful – so they are lifelong adventures along a mastery curve.

Yet there are small number of foundational concepts accessible by studying a few books.  My recommendations, in no particular order, and what you learn from each:

Warfighting (Marine manual of Maneuver Warfare) Best 100 pages on strategy and tactics I’ve ever read.  Far more accessible and applicable to the Western mind than Sun Tzu’s canonical work “The Art of War.”  You can easily translate these concepts to business and non-profit organizations. 

The 80/20 Principle (Richard Koch) Unequal distributions are ubiquitous in the universe.  Learn to recognize them.  Learn to work with them as allies. 

Getting Things Done (David Allen) Incredibly useful practices for managing massive information flows while staying focused on your best work.  Use your brain for what it’s best doing, and systems for managing everything else.

The Fifth Discipline (Peter Senge) Systems thinking is crucial in a complex world.  Master the 11 Laws of the Fifth Discipline and study the archetypes in the appendix – once you recognize the common patterns you’ll diagnose problem and solution spaces much faster. 

The Personal MBA (Josh Kaufman) Concise explanations of business concepts.  Use it as a reference book when you need a quick refresher. 

The Effective Executive (Peter Drucker) Classic text on knowledge work and the work that needs to be done to drive an organization forward.  Prescient and still timely. 

The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People (Stephen Covey) Covey invented nothing but shares old wisdom extremely well.  These seven habits will serve you as you play the long game.

How to Read a Book (Mortimer Adler) Use the approach described here to dissect complex information in any medium and extract its value efficiently.   

The Effective Manager (Mark Horstman) Hands-down the best information for the basic practices of managing employees: delegation, feedback, coaching, and how to run meetings. 

Bare Bones Project Management: What you can’t not do (Bob Lewis) Only 56 pages, addresses key issues about working with stakeholders.  This is the ideal book for people who need to manage projects as part of their regular work, not as a full-time profession.  

Crucial Conversations (Joseph Grenny et al) There’s an 80/20 distribution to conversation difficulty.  This book outlines effective tactics you can use in the deeper end of difficulty. 

The Lean Startup (Eric Ries) The concepts of minimal viable product and carefully testing your assumptions are generally useful.

The Power of Full Engagement (Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz) Manage your energy, not your time.  Manage your performance like an athlete.

Many other people have benefitted from these recommendations.  I’ve listed these as being the best available in English.  There are other books which touch on these concepts and practices.  Find what works for you.

Final recommendation:  Concentrate on books which are deep enough to yield value each time you read it. 

There you go, 10 essential leadership books, none of which have the word leadership in the title.

In the past 30 years the bulk of HR effort is protecting the rear-end of the corporation.  Compliance. Policy. Dealing with personnel issues which threaten the organization.  The next largest chunk was transactional.  Compensation and Benefits. Performance reviews and promotions. Support for reorganizations. Do everything personnel-related with as little money and labor as possible. The smallest portion was about talent development.

The legal and operational aspects will remain for corporations.  They’re a cost of doing business.  But optimizing exclusively for these is not going to help organizations thrive.

Therefore, I recommend leaders design the organization with separate-but-in-touch groups for (1) Operations & Compliance, and (2) Developing Employees.  (Find better names!)

The burnout rate in HR is incredibly high.  One of the major reasons for this is the mismatch between the people who go into HR roles and the major work being asked of them.  People who love culture, org design, coaching and people development are generally NOT the people who thrive by creating transactional efficiencies and operations groups. 

Organizations should hire people suited for operations work to execute and incrementally improve HR transactional systems, self-service, and help desks.  Corporate policies and directives can be established by leaders who don’t need to be charged with day-to-day execution. 

Everyone will happily repeat that “people are our greatest asset,” but our behaviors suggest otherwise.  Plenty of energy has gone into “people development” activity.  “But Glenn we’ve already been doing all that! It’s not working.” An emphasis on self-development is insufficient.   Your current system is perfectly designed to generate the results you’re getting.  If you aren’t satisfied with the results, you’ll need to change the system.

I suggest that we’ve been optimizing for the wrong things. Investing in the long game of talent development by optimizing for maturity and professionalism is the distinguishing opportunity.  Cultivate and reward developing better skills.  Create systematic plans to bring new people managers up to strong competence quickly.  Set expectations for developing mastery of foundational skills like communication, running meetings and projects, and effective decision-making.  Reward more senior and experienced employees helping others. 

Also, consider who is leading as well as the means of developing people.  Abandon the traditional metrics to gauge progress (e.g., # of course hours/employee/year).  The apprentice model (training to learn new skills, practice with feedback, and associating with masters of the craft) is the time-honored way to develop maturity and mastery.  Pieces of the apprenticeship model won’t be enough.  The most obvious failure point is the dearth of trustworthy mentors able and willing to bring apprentices along. 

My recommendations for creating a larger pool of mentors:

• Provide training and coaching in how to have coaching and mentoring conversations.  They’re less difficult than some imagine; there are landmines which some don’t recognize.  Stop assuming people know how to do this kind of work with others.
• Create a pathway to foster makers of apprentice-makers
• Celebrate your “Ben Franklins” – those with decades more experience and perspective
• Reward people for sharing stories about their mistakes and lessons learned
• Intentionally hire people with pastoral and counseling experience in their background, not as their primary role, but as a powerful complement to their other competencies.  These men and women are unsurprised about human foibles and ever optimistic about human potential.

Optimize for maturity and professional growth (skills, behaviors). Why maturity?  Because immaturity and pride are at the root of nearly all our worst behaviors, including self-sabotage.

What does professionalism look like?  My list:

• Be truthful.  Always be honest, with appropriate candor.
• Keep promises.  Keep confidences.
• Be on time and respect the time of others.
• Criticize and challenge ideas & interpretations, not people.
• Express appreciation.
• Assume the best of others rather than the worst.
• Own your results.
• Work hard with your strengths; work cooperatively with those having complementary strengths.
• Be prepared.  Excuses are lies we tell ourselves.
• Play the long game.
• Expect much from other professionals, and even more from yourself.

This whole process will take time and sustained energy.  Choosing this path requires leadership courage because this is crock-pot work for organizations rather than microwave, and frankly out of step with some popular approaches.  You will see early signs of progress, and the right people will respond well to the initiative.

Many people say they want a balanced life.  They’ve heard that a balanced life is the goal. 

Balance feels nice. The dream of balance feels even better. 

Balance is a transitory state.  It’s not a permanent condition.  Pay attention to what your muscles are doing when you walk a tightrope — maintaining balance is not a passive process!

Something I’ve noticed studying the biographies of accomplished men and women is that they didn’t lead very balanced lives.  But they had rhythms and practices which helped them.  Balance was never their goal.

You can’t work directly on balance.  It’s an emergent property of paying attention to rhythms. The way to achieve some occasional balance in your life is to work harder at productive rhythms.  Here are examples:

• Work, changing the type of work, rest periods.
• Seasons of engagement and withdrawal.
• Information input and creative output.
• Times together and times alone.
• Intentional self-restraint and feasting celebrations.

As mammals we’re biologically very poor at measuring balance and exquisitely able to sense when there is imbalance.  Use that ability to recognize when you need to shift the rhythm.

You can also apply this to organizational work. Balance is not the goal, but times of productive balance can emerge when there are resilient rhythms.

“A ritual is a sequence of activities involving gestures, words, actions, or objects, performed according to a set sequence. Rituals may be prescribed by the traditions of a community, including a religious community. Rituals are characterized, but not defined, by formalism, traditionalism, invariance, rule-governance, sacral symbolism, and performance.” (from Wikipedia)

One of the characteristics of high-performing individuals and teams are specific rituals they create to “attach” meaning and psychological preparation to functional tasks. 

A police officer friend tells me that every morning he puts on his uniform is a ritual to get his head into the right place to be effective.  He buttons his shirt from bottom to top because it helps him stand tall.  He gives his badge and name plate a quick polish to remind him what he stands for.  He carefully checks the snap on his pistol holster to reinforce the requirement to keep lethal force under control. 

Moms develop morning routines for young children to help them get everything organized and launch into the day.  Teachers greet students at the beginning of class and send them out with a repeated phrase.  Soldiers go through their checklists before battle, and a comm check becomes an opportunity to affirm “we’re together in this.”  Many businesses have rituals associated with starting or ending a meeting, when a new person onboards, and when the company hits a big objective.

Many families have rituals for birthdays and special events.  I know of families which only eat certain foods on holidays, or always go out together to see a movie on January 1^st. I grew up in a family that had red plates for the birthday person to use at meals.  My wife designated “backwards” meals on birthdays – we started with dessert first.  My dad used to tell me “Be a Brooke” – meaning uphold the family honor of hard work and truthfulness – when he dropped me off at events, and when he sent me off to college. 

Rituals can also guard against our worst tendencies.  I knew a coworker who identified a telephone pole about midway from his home to the office.  When he headed home from the office, he mentally took all the work stuff in his head and stowed it in an imaginary bag hung on that telephone pole.  He picked up the contents again as he drove to the office.  This helped him be truly present at home with his family.

Rituals are more than habits and traditions.  They have psychological power to help us perform our best. 

Give some thought to what rituals you can create for yourself and your team.  Creating new rituals sets you apart as a leader.