Every successful organization shares a common trait – good or great leadership. I’ve written numerous articles on this topic and how the same is connected to employee retention, market share increase, brand dominance, and organizational wealth (balance sheet and cash flow). Fundamentally, organizations flourish under good leaders and flounder when leadership is poor or not present.
I’ve worked with many, many organizations in turn-around situations whereby, prior executives failed to provide solid leadership and operational performance demonstrated that lack of proper leadership. In senior living, the common signs of poor leadership include staff morale, too many unidentified supervisory or management positions generating bureaucracy but not results, weak financial structure expressed via marginal cashflows, census challenges, rate imbalances, no growth plan, marginal quality and service, etc. The structural imbalances are evident even if the basics get done.
There are only three business strategies: grow, milk, or sell. Selling occurs when a business decides that it either cannot exist on its own or it’s time to return capital to its investors. Milking often occurs before selling if the business has been successful. Milking entails skimming profits and cash, generally prior to selling. For non-profits, milking and selling are pretty much, moot strategies. Frankly, most businesses choose to adopt a growth strategy. Growth however, requires good, solid leadership and governance. Without these elements, a strategy for growth may be discussed or even outlined but implementation will not occur successfully.
I am a fan of Peter Drucker and Steve Jobs in terms of how leadership and growth are operationalized. From both, I’ve developed and maintained a set of leadership principles that tested, over time, work and facilitate growth and business success. Below are the first five principles.
- Remember Occam’s Razor/KISS: Leaders should keep things as simple as possible and focus on relentless incrementalism. Growth comes via a learned set of behaviors that if properly simplified, and rewarded, become habits. Likewise, it easier for the operational leaders to put into place, simple goals and objectives that forward the growth strategy. I’ve watched so many strategic elements fail not due to a bad concept but due to too much complexity. How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time!
- Measure what Matters: This ties to one above but it is a bit more nuanced. Organizations talk about KPIs, etc. and throw out reams of data, often meaningless to growth. I like a simple set of core metrics. For example, care breaks down to only so many things that matter to the patient and the organization. Outcomes are key. Financials are relevant only such that the same paint the desired picture. I like a focus on cash, especially in relationship to the expenses. This is often called, ROI.
- Play a Long Game: Leaders should focus on a long view, one that embraces an ongoing picture of what growth and success looks like. Short views frustrate management and staff. The short stuff is about progress toward a longer, bigger picture. Paint this picture, evangelize it, reward it and growth will occur.
- Create Succes via Humanness: In service organizations like healthcare, people are the capital. They are the most precious commodity and a renewable resource. Leaders build teams like coaches. Treating people with respect, caring about them and for them, affords them the comfort and willingness to do great things. I like what Steve Jobs said about doing great things in business: “Great things in business are never done by one person; they’re done by a team of people.”
- Create Constant Forward Momentum: Leaders are and always should be, ahead of any point in time. They sell and exhibit a forward vision and work constantly, to keep momentum going forward (e.g., growth). A good leader looks to simplify, keep obstacles to progress minimalized, rewards activity and growth, recognizes performance, and when necessary, eliminates people that are barriers to the team and its accomplishments.
TGIF!. I’ll have more on leadership in future posts!