Stay focused on your goal. As the leader, you know what your destination is or what you’re trying to achieve. If you’re on the road and you run into traffic, you’re able to alter the route a little bit, and your employees don’t think you’ve abandoned the overall goal of where you’re trying to go.
You have to have that constancy around the purpose; that is a nonnegotiable skill for leaders in business. You’re just not going to get anywhere if you don’t set the direction right and make it known to everybody.
I’m a believer that your strategic plan needs to be very alive. It should be a very short document that clearly talks about these elements: the goals, values, mission and purpose of your organization.
What you have written down is one thing, but what you live is the most important thing, and that’s day-to-day and in every way. That’s the way you make your plan live within an organization. There’s that constancy around, ‘This is important, and this is why.’
Practice your art. The style issue is really the art of management. You can read about all the different theories — that’sthe science of management — but when you apply it, you’reable to be eclectic. You’re able to pick and choose the different styles in order to be effective. That’s sort of a continuous learning process for leaders.
So much of leading and management is learning. I’ve often said it’s a hobby of mine, but it’s also a passion — how people work in organizations, how people work together, how leaders bring out the best in people to accomplish the goals of the business. My advice to other leaders would be to constantly learn.
A lot of times, there’s some stretch in your vision. You’re not dealing with exactly what things are today; you want to have that dream able future of what you believe could be the maximum that you could achieve in this business.
You have to get your vision to where you can inspire people by talking about it. People have to understand the vision so they know what their job is and how it fits with what you’re trying to do for the customers, what you’re trying to do for the future and how to get the business to thrive.
Building the shared vision is communicating your goals, values and mission so they become so deeply ingrained and shared throughout the organization that it binds people together around a common identity, a common sense of destiny and a shared picture of the future.
HOW TO REACH: San Diego Hospice and The Institute for Palliative Medicine, (866) 688-1600or www.sdhospice.org
