Overcome the six temptations of successful organizations

by Dave Anderson

The enemy of great is good. The primary reason so few leaders or organizations ever become great is because they get good and they stop. They stop growing, learning, risking and changing. They use their track record of prior successes as evidence they’ve arrived. Believing their own headlines, the leaders in these successful organizations are ready to write it down, build the manual and document the formula. This mentality shifts their business from a growth to maintenance mindset; and trades in innovation for optimization.

These six stumbling blocks prevent you from making the leap from good to great. They are the six most common and devastating temptations of successful organizations. The key to overcoming them is awareness. The more you are aware of these six traps, the more likely you are to recognize them and to take action to overcome them.

Temptation 1: The leaders of successful organizations stop working on themselves. Why? The leaders of successful organizations often think they’ve got it all figured out. So they continue to work hard on their job but stop working on themselves.

They use their experience and track record as a license to never read another book or attend a course in their field. They point to their acclaim and accomplishments and decide to take the skills they learned once upon a time and run the rest of their career with them.

Remedy: Continue to work on yourself as hard as you do on your job. Commit to a personal growth program where you deliberately upgrade your skills. This must become a discipline. As you grow, you have the credibility and competence to grow others. But when you stop growing, you will plateau and become a lid on the people you lead.

Temptation 2: The leaders of successful organizations stop thinking big. Why? When a team gets on a roll, some leaders get spooked and start to play it safe. They stop playing to win and instead play not to lose. Where they once thought big and new, they now think incrementally. They lose their hunger and spend more time maintaining than stretching. 

Remedy: Never break your own momentum by resting, reflecting or celebrating too long because momentum is much easier to steer than to start. To stay hungry and continue thinking big do the following:

A When you’re doing well, go shopping. One of the best ways to stretch your thinking and disturb the comfort of routine is to visit companies who are doing better than you are.

B. Stir up an inspirational dissatisfaction. An inspirational dissatisfaction does not mean you are never pleased or satisfied. It’s not a license to beat yourself up or your people. Instead, it’s a creative awareness that you can do better; you can do more to work harder on yourself and invest exhaustively in your team.

C. Develop a daily dose of paranoia. The best leaders act as though someone is out to get them, like they’re on the verge of losing every customer and every day. This keeps them in an attack mode and prevents them from sinking into a rut. 

D. Continue to set goals that stretch your team. A goal is only effective when it forces change, big decisions and bold action. This is also known as discomfort. If you can hit your goals with a business as usual approach, your goals are too small.

Temptation 3: The leaders of successful organizations stop leading from the front. Why? When a business is getting results and steamrolling along, it can feel like everything’s tidy and under control. Thus, the leaders hit the remote control button and leave the trenches for their office where they preside and administer but no longer lead.

Remedy: Stay engaged in the trenches of your business by doing the following:

1. Attend meetings where your presence makes a positive difference.
2. Stay involved with the recruiting and hiring process.
3. Conduct one-on-one coaching sessions with your high potentials.
4. Take the time to connect with and build relationships with your people.
5. Make yourself available for questions, ideas and problems.
6. Give fast positive reinforcement and confront poor performances just as quickly.
8. Communicate vision and values consistently.

Temptation 4: The leaders of successful organizations stop developing others. Why? Successful leaders look at their results, stare in the mirror, pound their chest and convince themselves it’s all because of them. They don’t want to rock the boat by delegating, sharing power, pushing decision making down or developing an inner circle. They adopt the lone ranger mindset toward leading, whereupon they assume more and more responsibility, rather than developing a team to share the load

Remedy: Commit to building a team by consistent training and coaching of all employees and mentoring your highest potentials. Push power and decision-making down so you make your people less dependent on you. By developing leaders at all levels you broaden your capacity and build a bench competence that multiplies your own leadership and effectiveness.

Temptation 5: The leaders of successful organizations stop holding others accountable. Why? Since results are satisfactory and there’s no immediate crisis, why should they rock the boat by getting in people’s face and applying pressure to perform.

Remedy:
1. Raise or redefine clear performance expectations so people feel become more focused and feel a positive pressure to perform. This clarity of expectations creates a benchmark for accountability.

2. Give fast, consistent and brutally honest feedback on performance to keep people out of a gray area.

3. Reward above-average performance loudly, tangibly and publicly at the same time you establish consequences for those failing to get results.

4. Proactively recruit to build a pipeline of talent that reduces your chances of being held hostage by under-performers.

Temptation 6: Everyone in successful organizations begins to abandon the basics. Why? Since the natural tendency when you’re doing well is to let up, people start getting away from the disciplines and decisions that made them successful in the first place.

Remedy:
1. Sweat the small stuff. Contrary to prevailing pundit wisdom, I highly suggest you sweat the small stuff in your business. As a leader, you should sweat the basics, the other five temptations and the tendency to let up and abandon vital disciplines just because there is no visible crisis.

2. Weave the mantra, “become brilliant in the basics” into your culture. As a leader you should embrace the mantra to become brilliant in the basics and there are four key words to becoming brilliant in the basics: day in, day out. You have to press the issue on good and bad days alike and weave this awareness into your culture.

Without an awareness of these temptations starting at the top of a business, your organization will never make the leap from good to great. In addition, the organization becomes more vulnerable to ruts and plateaus. The effort you expend in overcoming the six temptations of successful organizations is worth the price. Because once you break your own momentum by violating one or more of these principles, regaining it takes several times the effort. As General Patton said, “Never yield ground. It is always cheaper to hold on to what you have than to retake it once it is lost.”

This article is taken from Dave Anderson’s upcoming book: Up Your Business: Seven Steps to Fix, Build or Stretch Your Organization (Wiley & Sons). Anderson is a professional speaker and trainer specializing in management and leadership. He earned his business reputation by leading top national automotive dealerships to record breaking sales. For more information e-mail or go to: www.LearnToLead.com.

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