Stepping up, Standing down

Photo by Tam Minton on Unsplash

Following up last week’s post about facing and resolving one’s inner battles, let’s turn outward, sort of.

About two thousand years ago, a Chinese general named Sun-Tzu wrote a 13-chapter tract about the martial arts and warfare, entitled "The Art of War." While I am sure that he was, as many leaders tend to be, quite self confident and at least a touch self-centered, I am equally sure he didn't envision that his treatise would become a best-seller for business leaders a couple of millennia hence.

The Art of War is widely quoted and cited on a range of topics, particularly business subjects - from general management to sales to human resources - and has become synonymous with the melding of strategic and tactical thinking.  One of the most famous lines speaks directly to that: "Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat."

The real take-away from his philosophy though is that Sun-Tzu believed that engaging in physical battle was the choice of fools; his writings are mostly focused on how to out-think opponents, not to tangle directly with them.

“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but know not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat.  If you know not the enemy or yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”

In other words, get to know yourself and the battle is won. From my experience working with and around successful leaders, I have been taught some concepts to help keep one focused and grounded. They are:

1. Start Where You Are:  When you run a business or lead an organization, you are often seen as the organization; however, that cannot last long if you want to grow.  Are you glib and extroverted? Demanding and driven to succeed?  Detail oriented? Adverse to selling?  While introspection is hard for some, knowing who you are, what motivates you and coming to grips with your strengths and weaknesses is key to creating an effective organization and operation that complements you.  Without this self-knowledge, you greatly diminish your ability to grow beyond yourself. 

2. Have a Clear Vision:  Why do you what you do?  What do you want from your organization?  Are you building a business to support a lifestyle or build a legacy? Do you have an exit strategy? These are basic questions that provide a reference point from which to guide your decisions.  Unfortunately, many times they go unasked, as well as unanswered. 

3. Set Fewer Goals:   If you search the term "work on your business, not in it" you will get nearly 5 million results in about 1/3rd of a second via Google. You are obviously not alone: there are a lot of overburdened executives and owners out there. The key is to set fewer goals and establish both a clearly-defined path to success and a system of execution, measurement and accountability. Too many goals means lack of focus and stretched resources. This often means failure.

4. Kill Complexity:  Can your conversations and collateral materials be fodder for a game of buzzword bingo? Managers are always looking for the next big idea, but in that pursuit many also overreach, adding layers of complexity when simplicity is what sells.  More often than not, the result of this overreach is more enervating than energizing.  Simplify.  Your customers and employees will thank you. 

5. Coach and teach:  Don't do; delegate.  There are many reasons why business owners do not delegate, many of which emanate from fears about loss of control.  As Michael Gerber wrote in The E-Myth Revisited, there is a vast difference between delegation and abdication. 

Moving from doer to manager is the first phase in the evolution of a successful leader; becoming a manager of managers is the second, and the mastery of that is the definition of a successful leader, who knows him/herself and refrains from battles that should not be waged.