Not much has changed since Beowulf had to slay the dragons that were wreaking havoc in Denmark. First he struck down the dragon Grendal. Later he took out Grendal’s mother—half-human and half-dragon (trust me, she did not look like Angelina Jolie of the 2007 movie). However, one dragon remained to threaten Beowulf’s reign as king, and in end, it brought him down, proving that…
It never does to leave a live dragon out of the equation.
J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit
Today, 1600 years later, leaders are still being brought down by unslain dragons. Almost every organization has one…or more. The dragon is the unspoken truth—the issue that most everyone knows about and fears. The dragon can stop change initiatives and sink morale. No one can do anything about the dragon except the leader. If the dragon has been around a long time, most people are resigned to the fact that the leader probably won’t do anything. So the best and brightest leave for greener pastures, and everyone else hunkers down, trying to be invisible to both the leader and the dragon.
Dragons are often people: turf shepherds, abusive managers, or relatives and close friends of the leader. The most dangerous situation is when the leader is the dragon. Dragons can also be incompetence in key positions, obsolete technology, products that are endangered species, or software that doesn’t work (probably sold to the organization by the leader’s nephew).
If your organization has a dragon—and it probably does—it will eventually bring you down if you don’t slay it. (Generally, dragons can’t be reformed; they have to be removed.) It is your job as the leader to get the unspoken truth on the table:
Leadership is equally about creating a climate where the truth is heard and the brutal facts confronted.
Jim Collins
What kind of climate does your organization have? Are the truth and brutal facts confronted, honestly confronted—even when they are about you? Are you the dragon? If you aren’t sure, get help. If you don’t, you may end up like Beowulf.
© Copyright 2011 by Dick Wells, The Hard Lessons Company
[if this post was interesting and helpful to you, please forward it to other leaders you know.]
“The key to positive action is knowing the difference between a problem and a fact of life.
A problem is something that can be solved.
A fact of life is something that must be accepted.”
Fred SmithCEO of FedEx
One fact of life is Bob Dylan was right: The Times They Are A-Changin’.
Cars have replaced horse-drawn buggies (except with the Amish community). A growth strategy focused on buggy whips is certain to fail.
iPods have replaced CDs which replaced cassette tapes which replaced 8-track tapes which replaced vinyl records which replaced… (before my time). Something is going to replace iPods. Count on it.
Wireless-only telephone service was up to 23% last year and growing fast. AT&T is doing great, but not because of landlines.
B&W TV’s were replaced by color which are now in HD—LCD, plasma or LED—and 3D is moving up fast. I have a “tube TV” in my garage that is on its way to the recycle bin.
One out of five millennials claim no religious affiliation or belief whatever. That is 4 times as many as a couple of generations ago.
Millennials still involved in church are leaving the rock-band mega churches of their parents for candles, incense, stained glass, rituals and symbolism. Look around next Sunday. Where have the 20-somethings gone?
Whatever happened to snail mail, Blockbuster and Plymouth?
A fact of life is that significant change is inevitable. If not technology driven, it will be culture driven. Anne Mulcahy, who led the turn-around at Xerox, summed it up this way:
“Do not defend yourself against the inevitable.”
America’s Best Leaders, US News 2008
Organizations with leaders who resist, ignore or fear change will become irrelevant at some point in the future. When? I can’t say for sure. But why wait until it happens? Take action now so your organization doesn’t sink in the rising waters of change.
Come gather ’round people wherever you roam
And admit that the waters around you have grown
And accept it that soon you’ll be drenched to the boneIf your time to you is worth savin’
Then you better start swimmin’ or you’ll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin’.
Bob Dylan (verse 1 of The Times They Are A-Changin’)
©2011 by Dick Wells, The Hard Lessons Company
Last week, my wife and I traveled by car to visit her sister in the North Carolina mountains. We left from Indiana, meandered across Kentucky, clipped the northeast corner of Tennessee, then climbed our way to their cabin on a 2400 foot high peak near Sunshine, N.C. The view was spectacular. The food and fellowship was even better. It was a five-day whirlwind trip, but well worth it.
Three times going and three times returning, our progress was marked by crossing a state line. If we were getting drowsy, or a little bored, the state line signs gave us a lift because they meant we were getting closer to our destination. That’s why a trip across Texas seems never-ending; no matter how long you’ve driven, it’s still a long way to the state line.
One way to shorten a trip is by using Walmarts instead of state lines to mark progress. There are almost 6000 Walmarts in the US, so Walmart spottings would be much more frequent than state line spottings. But it hasn’t always been that way. Sam Walton opened his first department store (Walton’s 5 & 10) in 1950 in Bentonville, Arkansas. It wasn’t until 1968 that he ventured across the state line to open stores (now called Walmart) in Oklahoma and Missouri—an 18 year journey. Walton must have felt like he was driving across Texas in those early years.
Are there any leadership lessons from this? Yes.
#1—Marking progress is an important part of any organization’s journey and the more markers the better. Markers are crucial to maintaining the motivation needed to keep going.
#2—Building an enduring and great organization is a long journey, not a whirlwind trip. It is tempting to speed on a trip, but it takes more gas, increases the chances for crashing, and may get you pulled over—stopped—in which case you will lose more time than you gained.
#3—Benjamin Franklin once said, “Make haste slowly.” It took Walmart 18 years to cross the state line and 31 years to cross the border into Mexico. Take Ben’s advice and follow Walmart’s example: don’t get in a hurry and don’t become discouraged or tired just because the journey is long.
See you at the state line—or Walmart—whichever comes up first.
In September of last year, my daughter, Cathy, accepted the position of Preschool Director at Graceland Baptist Church in New Albany, IN. Fearing we would set up roadblocks, she kidnapped our three grandsons and fled for Indiana in the middle of the night. Eventually, to keep from being disinherited, she called and confessed, we forgave her, and thus began a seven month saga of new jobs for her and Sam (the husband and co-conspirator), a new school for the boys, selling a Tennessee house, buying an Indiana house, loading trucks, trailers, a POD, etc., then unloading them all. The unloading was finished last Saturday, and that brings me to Scott, the subject of this post.
Scott is Pastor Scott Miller, the lead pastor at Graceland and Cathy’s boss, except he’s not a boss, he’s a servant leader. There is lot about Scott’s leadership I don’t know, but there are three things—very important things—I have observed and he gets bright red bold check marks for all three.
√#1 It is never about him. In 2003, Jim Collins identified his list of the TOP TEN CEOS OF ALL TIME (in Fortune magazine). They were very different except in this one regard:
“Much depended on them, but it was never about them.”
Scott Miller is the pastor of a large church; much depends on him, but it is never about him.
√#2 He supports his staff. Whatever is going on, even a preschool sock hop, Pastor Scott shows up. Not to interfere, take charge or grab the spotlight, but to let his staff know that he cares about their stuff as much as he does his own. (Sunday morning is his prime time.)
√#3 Back to unloading trucks and trailers, when a group of men showed up on a rainy Saturday morning to help Cathy and Sam move in, Pastor Scott was there too. He always does what he asks other people to do. There are no jobs “beneath” him.
If you are a leader of any type or size of organization, follow Pastor Scott’s example:
You’ll be a much better leader because:
“…people buy into the leader before they buy into a mission statement.”
James Hunter
The Servant
Monday is Seth day. Dottie and I spend the day being entertained by our 4 year old grandson, Seth, or “Luke Buddy” as he likes to be called (Luke Skywalker is his current hero). For me, it is a day of hunting the bad guys with battery powered laser guns, followed by an hour or so of wrestling. My 67 year-old-body is worn out but happy when the day ends.
The bad guys hide in every closet, behind and under the bed, in the bathrooms, refrigerator, oven, etc. Seth takes the lead and I’m his back-up as we clean them out one at a time. Usually we have to do it more than once—they have a way of coming back to life. They remind me of the challenges and problems that leaders face on a regular basis. They hide everywhere and are hard to kill. The leader has to revisit the closet on a regular basis or bad guy thinking, culture, habits, values and personal agendas will sneak back in. By the way, it helps to have a back-up. Hunting the bad guys by yourself is a lonely and exhausting job.
When Seth says, “Let’s wrestle,” it’s game on. He comes from every direction—fearlessly, relentlessly. He has me in a headlock one minute, is riding me the next, then tackling me and counting: One…two…three…out! None of my holds are effective. “You can’t get me,” he hollers. And of course, I can’t (or don’t). If you are in the business world, your competitors are like Seth, coming at you from every direction—fearlessly, relentlessly—trying to count you out. If you turn your back on your competition or customers, it’s over before you know what happened. That’s why leadership is a 24/7/365 job. It’s tiring, but it’s worth it, because when you win, you’re happy when the day ends!
The Bottom Line: (1) inside the doors, visit the bad guy hiding places on a regular basis and make sure you have a back-up, and (2) outside the doors, stay alert to what is going on with your competitors (don’t let them sneak up on you) and your customers (don’t let them sneak away from you).
How many balls can you keep in the air? All of us have a juggling limit and we can’t exceed it because dropped balls always have consequences.
The last 30 days or so have been juggling days for my family. My daughter, Cathy, is busy with her job and being a mom while selling one house (TN), buying another house (IN), getting ready to move, and celebrating a 4-year-old boy’s birthday—very high priority! Dottie (my wife) and I have spent a lot of time helping her with the Tennessee end of things. My schedule has overloaded with two speaking engagements, preparation time for a Hard Lessons workshop next week, an important project at church, a major writing project, plus the normal number of meetings, etc. Feeling a bit overwhelmed a couple of weeks ago, I experienced an early morning panic attack, fearing that I would prove to be mortal and drop a ball.
So, here is what worked for me, and what will work for you, when the balls you are juggling become a blur and you know one is going to hit the ground if you don’t do something.
First, identify a ball or two you can put down for a while. You may not want to, but nothing calamitous will happen if you do. For me, it was writing. I put my major writing project on hold until mid-April.
Second, identify which ball(s) only you can juggle. If you don’t keep them in the air, they will hit the ground. For me, it was preparation for my Hard Lessons workshop in Wichita next week. No one can do that for me.
Third, identify some things you can delegate, even if only for a short time. Loading a POD with Cathy’s furniture was it for me. I found someone I trusted to take charge so I could forget it. I wasn’t even there when the POD was loaded.
Finally, for all the balls still in the air, identify the minimum effort required to keep them there for a time. Something as simple as a phone call can keep a ball in the air for a day or two. A phone call to the city was all I needed to arrange hauling a worn-out sofa to the landfill. They picked it up! I didn’t have to do anything except move it to the street. Easy; quick; another ball didn’t hit the ground.
If you are approaching your juggling limit, you have to do something because dropped balls aren’t an option. If you don’t like my four suggestions, create your own four, but don’t wait until after a ball hits the ground. It could be the one that hurts the most.
I have a friend, Elizabeth Widmer, who took time to straighten out my thinking about elephants. In an earlier post, I described three elephants at the Nashville zoo as sloshing in the mud, throwing dirt on their backs, and bumping into each other as they jockeyed for position.According to Elizabeth (who with a degree in zoology actually knows something about elephants), elephants, unlike people, do not jockey for position:
Elephants live in a matriarchal structured social order. The herd’s well being depends on the guidance of the matriarch. She serves the others by determining when they eat, rest, bathe or drink. Later in life, as the matriarch begins to be limited by advancing age, without question the next oldest replaces her. With this structure there will always be a leader, without struggle.
There are at least two things about the elephant matriarch’s leadership that people-leaders would do well to mimic:
1) the matriarch serves the others
2) the matriarch steps down when limited by….
The very best people-leaders serve their organizations instead of being served by the organization. I once heard a leader tell his entire staff that “you are here at my pleasure.” Not surprisingly, over the next several years, the best and brightest on that staff left at their own pleasure. Jim Collins, in describing the TEN BEST CEOs OF ALL TIME (Fortune, 2003), said this about them:
“…if one thing defines these ten giants, it was their deep sense of connectedness to the organizations they ran. Unlike CEOs who see themselves principally as members of an executive elite—an increasingly mobile club whose members measure their pay and privileges against other CEOs….Much depended on them, but it was never about them.”
It was never about them is another way of saying serves the others. Make it your motto and you’ll be a better leader—much better.
Stepping down from leadership is never easy and too often leaders don’t get the timing right. The elephant matriarch steps aside when limited by advancing age. People-leaders can be limited by a lot of things, not just age: paralysis (fear of change), near-sightedness, being hard of hearing, etc. Unfortunately, most of us don’t recognize our limitations, so unlike the elephants, a change in leadership doesn’t come without struggle. That is why it is so important for all of us to have someone who will tell us the truth about ourselves. Do you?
[Thanks to Elizabeth Widmer for her contributions to this post.]
Lesson #3 From The Johnstown Flood (1889)
When the South Fork dam collapsed in 1889, sending 5 billion gallons of water hurtling down the Little Conemaugh River toward Johnstown, Pennsylvania, (sweeping more than 2000 people to their deaths), the courts blamed God since He is in charge of rainfall. That’s convenient, but it’s not as simple as that.
In Lesson #1 we learned that brush, hemlock boughs, hay and horse manure were used to repair the cracks and leaks in the dam. Horse manure? Yes! No wonder the dam collapsed. But it’s not as simple as that.
In Lesson #2 we learned that the discharge pipes were removed and the spillways clogged so there was no way to release the water as it rose. No wonder the dam was breached when the heavy rains came. But it’s not as simple as that.
At some point, a few feet were graded off of the top of the dam so it would be wide enough for carriages to pass each other as they enjoyed an afternoon of sight seeing—going back and forth across the dam. After all, the top of the dam is the very best place to view the lake and one way carriage traffic is very inconvenient. The lowered dam meant it would be breached sooner as the rains came. But it’s not as simple as that.
Somehow, no one knows for sure how, when the grading was finished there was a low spot in the middle of the dam. Therefore, when the water began to first breach the dam, it was at the low spot in the middle where the water pressure is the highest. (The pressure is highest where the water is deepest.) So the highest pressure was at the lowest and weakest part of the dam. Surely that explains why it failed. But it’s not as simple as that.
There is no simple explanation as to why the dam failed. A combination of record rainfall, horse manure, clogged spillways, a widened carriage path and shoddy grading job were all in the mix. But it’s not as simple as that because except for the rainfall, all of these things happened because of decisions made by the South Fork Dam leaders. The dam failed because it was weak, but it was weak because the leadership was weak.
Organization failures often follow the same pattern as the South Fork dam: cut a little here, a poor decision there, some compromise for convenience, ignore some known weaknesses, add in some extra pressure from the outside, then boom, the whole thing (business, church, family, etc.) suddenly and rapidly collapses and a lot of people are swept away. Call it whatever you want, but the truth is: it’s a leadership failure.
Leadership is not easy and it’s not simple because complexity is a fact of life. Businesses are complex. Ministries are complex. Government is complex. Even families are complex. There are a lot of things that can go wrong and it’s the leader’s job to make sure they don’t. So the next time you hear yourself saying “it’s a no brainer” or “that’s simple,” be careful, because not much in today’s world is really as simple as that.
[Read the full story of the flood in The Johnstown Flood by David McCullough, my favorite author in the genre of American history.]
Lesson #2 From The Johnstown Flood.
We sat, glued to the TV for two days (May 1-2, 2010), watching in real time as the waters kept rising. The Cumberland River, the Harpeth and the Stones, all overflowed to levels not seen in over 50 years. Downtown Nashville went under, along with Opryland, east Nashville, Bellevue and Franklin, all victims to the great Nashville Flood of 2010. Before it was over, thousands of homes and businesses were damaged or destroyed and 21 people were dead. But it could have been worse, much worse.
Nashville is down river from five dams (Center Hill, Cordell Hull, Dale Hollow, Percy Priest and Old Hickory). These dams hold back thousands of times as much water as did the South Fork Dam above Johnstown, Pennsylvania. All released a lot of water, but they didn’t collapse. Two of them, the Old Hickory and Percy Priest dams, are as close to Nashville as South Fork was to Johnstown. If either of these dams had collapsed…well, don’t even think about it.
In addition to being patched with horse manure (see last week’s post), why did the South Fork dam collapse, sweeping away more than 2000 people?
Two important features of dam design are (1) discharge pipes that can be opened to lower the level of the water and (2) spillways that release rising water before it reaches the top of the dam. The higher the water, the greater the pressure on the dam, so releasing the water before it reaches the top of the dam is critically important.
At the South Fork dam, there were no discharge pipes…no way at all to lower the level of the water. As the rain hammered down and the water continued to rise, there was nothing they could do but watch. Higher and higher the water rose until it reached the spillway. But the spillway was clogged and couldn’t do its job. In order to keep fish from escaping the lake, a screen of closely spaced rods had been put across the spillway. During the heavy rain, all kinds of debris had drifted down the lake, caught on the rods and clogged the spillway, making it nearly useless. No discharge pipes…a clogged spillway…rising water and higher and higher pressure on a dam repaired with horse manure. A recipe for disaster? Yes.
And it’s a recipe for disaster in your personal life and for your organization. When the pressure is on, you better have a way of lowering the level of the water. Make sure your discharge pipes are working and your spillways not clogged. If you let the pressure rise too much, sooner or later, you—or your organization—will collapse and the casualty list will be high.
Feeling the pressure today? Don’t ignore it. Do something about it! A few suggestions that can help your organization, you personally, or both:
◊ Simplify—reduce the number of activities, projects, programs, special events
◊ Get help—don’t carry the load by yourself
◊ Rest—sometimes the best thing you can do is just shut down for a few days
◊ Exercise and eat right
◊ Make sure you aren’t the source of the pressure
Any reason you can’t start cleaning out your spillways today?
[For the full story of the flood, read The Johnstown Flood by David McCullough, my favorite author in the genre of American history.]
Lesson #1 From The Johnstown Flood.
On May 31, 1889, at 3:10pm, the South Fork Dam collapsed, releasing nearly 5 billion gallons of water in 35-40 minutes into the Little Conemaugh River (about the same amount of water that flows over Niagara Falls). One hour later, a wall of water—60 feet high in some places—hit the town of Johnstown, Pennsylvania, devastating the town and sweeping more than 2200 people to their deaths. The courts ruled the disaster was an Act Of God, and the heavy rainfall certainly was. But the collapse of the dam was caused by the acts of men. There is a lot for us to learn from the story of the Johnstown Flood, lessons that can help us avoid disaster in our personal lives and in our businesses or ministries.
The first break in the South Fork Dam occurred in 1862. However, since the lake was only half full and the watchman reduced the pressure on the dam by opening the relief valves, there was little flooding and the event was soon forgotten. The dam was not repaired and the lake was nearly empty and unused for almost 20 years until the South Fork Fishing And Hunting Club purchased the property and undertook repairs. Well, repairs may be an exaggeration because what they really did—to save money—was:
“…set about repairing the dam by boarding up the stone culvert
and dumping in every manner of local rock, mud, brush, hemlock boughs, hay,
just about everything at hand. Even horse manure was used in some quantity.”
David McCullough
The Johnstown Flood
I do not claim to be an expert in the construction or repair of earthen dams. But I am pretty sure that brush, hemlock boughs, hay and horse manure are not particularly effective materials for repairing a 60 foot high dam holding back 5 billion gallons of water. Relief and repair are not the same thing. It is often easier, less costly, and faster to fix problems with horse manure, but sooner or later….
Problems do not go away, but they do go underground or are covered with horse manure. It will always be more costly in the long run to ignore, patch, or cover problems rather than fix them. The South Fork Dam was certain to collapse when the pressure got high enough, and whatever you have in your life…your business…your ministry that is patched with horse manure is certain to collapse too.
Start today. Don’t wait until it is too late. Use concrete and rebar to fix the leaks in your life and organization. In the long run, you’ll be glad you did.
[For the full story of the flood, read The Johnstown Flood by David McCullough, my favorite author in the genre of American history.]
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