ORGANIZATION LEADER’S PREFERRED OPERATING STYLE

Typically, those organizations that generate the highest returns, the highest sustained growth and the best retention statistics have many of the same management and leadership skills in common.  Recently, Gallup, Inc. conducted a worldwide research study including thousands of people to identify the factors that best predict employee and work group performance.  Their study was titled: The Gallup Q12.  From this research they identified twelve key components regardless of generation, culture, or other external factors.  The twelve elements are:

1. I know what is expected of me at work.

2. I have the materials and equipment I need to do my job right.

3. At work, I have the opportunity to do what I do best every day.

4. In the last seven days, I have received recognition or praise for doing good work.

5. My supervisor, or someone at work, seems to care about me as a person.

6. There is someone at work who encourages my development.

7. At work, my opinions seem to count.

8. The mission or purpose of my company makes me feel my job is important.

9. My associates or fellow employees are committed to doing quality work.

10. I have a best friend at work

11. In the last six months, someone at work has talked to me about my progress.

12. This last year, I have had opportunities at work to learn and grow.

These 12 elements should become the backbone as to how one leads and manages people.  These elements alone will not make a company great but with good business practices and doing the right things and doing them right, the odds of business success are greatly increased. 

The leader of the business needs to have a vision and to communicate that vision to all with whom he/she comes into contact.  Employees especially want to know there is a future and that the leader is focused on that future.  Good employees want to work for and follow a good leader.  At the same time the leader of the business needs to know how to manage her/his daily routine.  The best managers have an early warning list from which they can tell them where the business is headed.  One might call them “correlations”.  Example, does the number of sales calls made in a week tell you the number of orders you should receive in a given period of time?  Does your manufacturing schedule follow a sales call pattern?  Do certain global economic situations directly relate to your A/R or days outstanding?  So on and so forth.  Good managers have an early warning list of three to five metrics that are good measures of the state of the business.

Jim Collins in his book, "Good to Great" identified the characteristics of the leaders that took their company from good to great.  The leaders are “self-effacing, quiet, reserved, even shy—these leaders are a paradoxical blend of personal humility and professional will.  They are more like Lincoln and Socrates than Patton or Caesar.”  Additionally, they are disciplined and are future focused, they get the “right people on the bus and the wrong people off the bus.”  They begin with people first and product second. 

Translated into practical language, a business owner needs to be optimistic, have the right people on board, give them the tools and guidance they need, encourage them, have concern for them as a person and offer them a challenge to make the most out of all they do. 

New small businesses have a terrible success rate but the odds are easy to beat and one does not have to be a gambler.  It is simply a question of where are you going to spend your time?  Do you want to have a successful business that will fund your dreams and aspirations or do you want to become the lowest paid and hardest working employee on an hourly basis?  If it is the previous then one must devote considerable time working ON their business and allow the competent employees to work IN the business.

To be a successful business leader and manager, one needs to take an honest look at how he/she thinks, leads and manages and then find a way to incorporate those known successful skills into their style that will make them a strong leader and manager without becoming someone they are not.