One of my all-time favorite business books, and a huge influence on my leadership philosophy is Andy Grove’s “Only the Paranoid Survive.”
Grove participated in the founding of Intel, and went on to become President, then CEO and Chairmen. Under his leadership, Intel became the 7th most profitable company among the Fortune 500, and he was Time Magazine’s Person of the Year in 1997.
In his book, Grove discusses strategic inflection points, how leaders must identify them, and lead their teams through them.
What is a “strategic inflection point?”
- Grove defines a strategic inflection point as a time in the life of a business or project when its fundamentals are changing significantly. Often, “point” is really a misnomer, and it’s actually a long, sometimes painful, period of change.
- To me, strategic inflection points are those times and decisions that make or break your business, your project, your Client relationship, your Executive’s view of you, etc.
- You could also look at Strategic Inflection Points as Tipping Points as well (based on Malcolm Gladwell’s popular book The Tipping Point, another must-read).
Leadership Tips from This Book:
- Only those who constantly try to anticipate change will survive when change happens.
- Seek the opinions of all around you, as they are usually in touch with impending change sooner than you are.
- Encourage debate at all costs. The most important tool in identifying a strategic inflection point is broad and intensive debate.
- Don’t justify holding back because you don’t know the answers – seek them out as fast as you can.
- Give your most considered opinion, and give it clearly and forcefully.
3 Questions Every Leader Should Ask Themselves:
- Am I actively seeking opinions from everyone possible, regardless of their title?
- Is our key competitor about to change? (Note: if you can’t clearly answer who that key competitor is, something significant is definitely going on.)
- Do people seem to be “losing it” – or that they increasingly don’t “get it” – around you? (Note: if so, they are likely applying old solutions to a new problem, a sign that you are in a strategic inflection point.)
4 Favorite Quotes:
- In times of change, managers almost always know which direction they should go in, but usually act too late and do too little.
- Businesses fail either because they leave their customers – i.e. they change a strategy that worked for them in the past – or because their customers leave them.
- Strategic inflection points provide an opportunity to break out of a plateau and catapult to a higher level of achievement.
- No statues will be carved for leaders who charge off on the wrong side of a complex decision.
Other Bloggers talking about this book and Andy Grove:
If you lead (whether or not you are formally a leader, you can lead!), you have a responsibility to give context to the team you work for. Giving context is about telling the story of “why” to your team members, and letting them be a part of it. It’s about explaining how certain decisions were made, how they fit into the bigger picture, and how they’ve impacted the business.
Here are two examples:
- You manage a high-profile website project, where your main Client is the Chairman of the board. Giving context in this situation means teaching your team why the Chairman makes the decisions she does (hint: she’s thinking in the best interest of the business). By doing giving context, you prevent speculation and “we have to do it because she said so” rationale that can quickly fill the void in a project that lacks context.
- You work in a fast-paced environment where you manage 20-30 projects at one time. Instead of taking the time on each project to give your project team the proper context behind why you are asking them to do something, you settle into just giving orders. Quickly, the team starts to distance themselves from you, and you notice they don’t respond as quickly, or proactively seek your advice as often, as they used to.
Giving context is about first making those around you (your project team, your immediate teammates, etc.) comfortable with you and your approach. Then, it’s about giving the the knowledge so that they can be on the same page you are!
Give your team the “backstory” (i.e. context) and you’ll be amazed at how they will grow and rise up to help your cause!
Being comfortable sounds nice, right? We all like our comforts: comfort foods, a favorite blanket, or a special place we like to go to. However, in the world of work, being comfortable is not a good thing.
Why?
If you’re comfortable, you’re likely stopped:
- Challenging yourself and those around you to be better
- Opening your mind to new ideas and solutions
- Accepting decisions that were previously made without understanding why
- Looking objectively at things like the “health” of your business right now
- Challenging group decision making
Being continually dissatisfied (but always with a positive attitude) is a great way to overcome being comfortable. Being dissatisfied does not mean being pessimistic. Rather, it means always looking at each and every decision you are making, or the decisions those around you are making, and truly asking yourself:
“Is this truly the best decision for our business?”
If you are truly committed to continuous improvement at work, you’ll notice you’re continually dissatisfied. It’s a simple case of “what you focus on you find.” If you focus on always making things better, you’ll always find things to make better!
It’s not easy to be continually dissatisfied. But remember, work that matters is hard. So, embrace the fact that by being dissatisfied, you are making today better than yesterday. Then, go find those things that need to be improved (even if they were decisions you made in the past) and improve them!
Leadership is not a title. Leadership is a choice. You earn respect. You earn experience. But you choose to be a leader.Whether you are an executive, middle manager, project manager, or intern, you choose to be a leader. And far too often, those who could be leaders choose not to.
How do you become a leader? Here are my top 3 leadership development tips.
- Make decisions. Decide to be happy. Decide to be excited about what you do. Decide that you want to achieve your Top 3 todos for today. Decide that you will make a conscious effort to help those you work with to grow. Decide to speak up to your CEO in a meeting. You get the idea! Leaders are people who are not afraid to make decisions. Do you find yourself actually making decisions, or continuously seeking answers and approval? If it’s the latter, then stop! Look objectively at what you are trying to do, and make decisions for yourself. Just ask yourself: “is this decision the best thing I can do right now?” If it is, decide and do it.
- Trust Your Instincts. This is intimately tied into #1 – Make Decisions, since without instincts, it’s very hard to make decisions! Instincts are what guide you through your thought process when analyzing any situation. Far too often, people “second-guess” their “gut instincts.” Don’t do this! All of your career, you are continuously fine-tuning your gut instincts. No report, no research, no opinion can make a decision. Those things can only help you to refine your gut instincts. Guess what? Start trusting your instincts, and a magical thing will happen: they’ll get better and better over time! You’ll be amazed at where it can take you.
- Allow Yourself and Your Team (if you have one) to Fail. How do you learn a foreign language? You screw it up until you get it right! Secret: the “best” people you will ever work with were not born that way. They’ve made BIG mistakes OFTEN. Yet, I’ve seen it happen time and time again: by trying to make things “perfect” a person, or an entire team, will inevitably either miss an opportunity or limit personal growth. I know this is scary stuff, but it’s key to your leadership development. Take the training wheels off yourself and your team. Jump out of the nest and fly! It’s the only way you’ll grow as a leader.
I hope you keep these leadership development tips in mind throughout your day, when you are faced with times where you can use all 3 of them.
Starting right now, decide to be a leader!
