Leadership

Speed
The Extraordinary Leader

Leadership Speed
Action Plan
Step 1Circle the 2 or 3 companion competencies where improvement would have a
positive impact in your organization and you have passion for improvement.
1. Innovation
2. Strategic Perspective
3. Courage
4. Stretch Goals
5. Communicate Powerfully
6. External Focus
7. Take Initiative
8. Knowledge and Expertise
Step 2List the companion competencies you will be working to develop below.
Create a development goal statement and in each box list implementation suggestions
that provide specific actions you will take to improve.
Companion Behavior 1
Development Goal
Specific Actions

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Leadership Speed

Companion Behavior 2
Development Goal
Specific Actions

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Leadership Speed
Development Suggestions

Listed below are implementation suggestions for each of the 8 companion behaviors
associated with Leadership Speed. Select 2 or 3 companion behaviors where improvement
would have a positive impact in your organization and you have passion for improvement.
Read through the implementation suggestions to begin to crystallize ideas about some
specific actions you might take to improve. Include the ideas you think best in your
development plan

1. Innovation
One way for a leader to increasing speed is to find a better, easier, quicker way to do
something. People often get stuck using the same old, standard processes, having the same
meetings and running things the same way they have always done it. If people take the time
and involve others to identify innovative ways to be more efficient they will always find better
options.

Answer the so that question. Innovation works best when you can answer the so that
questions. We want to find an innovative way to solve a problem so that we will can do
X more efficiently, which will in turn leverage and support our strategic objective. Being
clear about the strategy and mission of the organization helps people find innovative
solutions to problems that really matter.

Ask challenging questions. Most innovative ideas challenge existing practices, processes
and approaches. Be willing to ask hard questions that challenge the status quo. Enlist the
help of other team members in thinking about a fresh new way to accomplish something.

Create a change environment. Assume you were a newcomer into your group. What
products, processes and procedures would a newcomer see needing change? Identify
the benefits that change will create. This will help fuel the need for innovation. Then, be
willing to become a champion for new projects or programs. Present them to others in a
way to encourage support and involvement.

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Leadership Speed

2. Strategic Perspective
When people are driving but are not absolutely clear about where they are going, the natural
reaction is to slow down. Perhaps you have had the experience of going to lunch with a friend
but debating between two different eating establishments in the opposite direction. Again, the
natural reaction is to slow down. A wise Chinese proverb states that the man who chases two
rabbits loses them both. Having a clear perspective of where the organization is going and
how it plans to achieve a competitive advantage will help people move more quickly.

Look up, forward, and outside. The essence of strategic thinking might be summed up in
a popular motto of the early 1800s: Look up and not down; look forward and not back;
look out and not in. While not intended as a corporate strategy theorem, the ability to (a)
see future possibilities and not just the current reality, (b) the ability to project your thinking
into the future and not be stuck in the present, and (c) the willingness to look at your
industry, the competitive landscape, and the technology that is outside your own industry
are all descriptive of looking out and not in. Those are key ingredients of having strategic
perspective.

Become a student of strategy. As with many disciplines, it helps to be conversant and

comfortable with the language used within that field. There is a definite set of concepts
that help the conversation about strategy. If someone talks about value extraction as
a way to explain why a once strong company is now failing, your involvement in the
conversation will hinge on understanding the concept being discussed. So reading current
books and articles is a good first step. The writings of Ram Charan, C.K. Prahalad, Gary
Hamel and Michael Porter are good places to start.

Be the informant. Help your team understand key information about what is happening
outside your organization with customers, competitors and suppliers around the world.
Help them to see trends and brainstorm how your organization will respond to an ever
changing external environment.

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Leadership Speed

3. Courage
Leaders who move quickly demonstrate personal courage. Acting with speed often feels
risky. The person looking to avoid added personal exposure will be inclined to move slowly.
In general, people are more comfortable working at a steady pace. It takes a great deal of
courage to move faster and ask others to move fast with you.

Be a champion. An excellent way to demonstrate courage is to become a champion for a

new project or approach. Its easy to sit back and let others take the lead but those how
raise their hand and volunteer are viewed as being more courageous.

Be quick. Being the last person to get on board with a new project or direction shows fear
but being quick to embrace changes and new direction shows courage. One should not
make unformed or poor decisions but delaying important decisions when trends are clear
shows a lack of courage.

Challenge the status quo. In every organization there are always certain process and
procedures that are never questioned even though they may be inefficient or out of date.
They are done the way they are done because they have always been done that way.
Those who are willing to respectfully challenge these standard approaches demonstrate
courage.

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Leadership Speed

4. Set Stretch Goals

A wonderful way to increase speed is to set stretch goals. Setting time frames that are easy
to achieve encourage people to take their time and work at a slower pace. Aggressive time
frames combined with difficult objectives encourage everyone to pick up their pace. It takes
a lot of courage to set a stretch goal that is difficult to achieve but you will notice how it
encourages you to move faster.

Set stretch goals. Extraordinary leaders ask team members to raise their bar. When the
US President John Kennedy announced the goal to land a man safely on the moon within
the decade, everyone recognized that as a stretch goal. The technology did not exist. It
was unlike anything that the space agencies had done before. But the challenge was met.
There is great power in a dramatic, challenging goal. It unites people and evokes a level of
hard work and creativity that does not occur otherwise. Effective leaders learn the power
that stretch goals have when properly introduced and supported.

Act quickly. One subset of stretch goals is the challenge to do something quickly that has
typically taken a much longer time. Examples of this kind of stretch goal can be found
in virtually any organization. Whether it means reducing the time to process a mortgage
application from weeks to days, or the time to change the dies that stamp out metal parts
from hours to minutes; speeding things up usually has great benefits. Personally take the
initiative to act quickly when you see an opportunity. Getting others to act quickly on an
opportunity will stress test your communication and persuasion skills.

Follow-through, then follow-through again. Follow through on your assignments and

ensure that others follow through with their commitments. Too often assignments are
made but no one follows up and ensures completion.

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Leadership Speed

5. Communicate Powerfully and Prolifically

Leaders who are skillful at communicating powerfully are also more effective keeping work
moving forward. When employees lack clarity about what to do next it always slows down
work. Most people have also experienced confusing communications where they were not
clear about what to do and where to go. When team members are clear about goals, future
events, changes, new ideas, and plans for the group, they are can move forward quickly.

Make presentations memorable via stories. Use stories, examples, illustrations or parables
to make or augment every major point you seek to make. The stories will be remembered
when the abstractions are long forgotten.

Put yourself in the audience. Begin by asking yourself, What would I want to know or
learn more about if I were sitting in the audience? What are their biggest concerns as it
pertains to this matter? Then be sure to speak to those issues.

Organize for clarity. Create a simple structure for every major communication that
begins by describing the current situation, then explains the current problem, issue or
complication, then the alternative courses of action, and concludes by presenting your
recommendation and the reasons for it.

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Leadership Speed

6. External Focus
Leaders who have an excellent understanding of what is going on outside the organization,
what customers want, what competitors are doing, and what future trends will impact the
organization tend to move faster. This is a bit like what happens to us when walking and
running and we get passed. Inevitably we speed up. Many people only focus in on their own
organization and fail to look out at what going on around them. A clear view of the outside
world helps leaders to provide have a greater sense of urgency and move faster.

Collect and share information. The outside world for any team or work group includes
other groups and department in the organization. Understanding the issues and concerns
of other groups can help departments create positive synergy between the two groups.
If you travel and meet people from other organizations, bring important information back
to your other team members. If you read important information about competitors or your
industry; bring this back to the group.

Communicate the organizational strategy. It is impossible to understand the linkage

between customers, suppliers and other outside organizations until you are clear about
the strategy, mission and direction of your organization. Gaining and rich and deep
understand or strategic positioning, goals and objectives provide a starting point for
understanding outside forces.

Prepare a compelling company description. Develop a way of describing your

organization to others that highlights its unique position in the industry. Everyone gets
asked periodically about what kind of work you do, or what company your work for. This
is a great opportunity to give a short, compelling description of your organization.

2015 Zenger Folkman. All rights reserved. ROG.NPS51.16.0

Leadership Speed

7. Take Initiative
It is easy to coast along, doing things as youve always done them, and not make waves.
Increasing speed requires people to take initiative. Taking initiative always means extending
yourself beyond what is expected or defined by your role. Often people can see a variety of
things that could be done to make things move faster, but it takes initiative to get them started
and moving forward.

Accelerate your personal effort. Challenge yourself to push a little harder, try a little more,
putting in additional time and adding extra effort into your work. What if your team were
functioning at a much higher level? What would have to be different? What step could you
take to get it there? Choose one and create the plan for implementing it.

Go far beyond the expected. Merely doing a job well is not the same as taking initiative.
Look for opportunities to go far beyond what is expected of you by seeing something
that is falling in the crack between your team and another, and grabbing that problem and
fixing it. How could you far exceed in quality or quantity what has been done in the past?

Start something new. Some managers think their job consists in merely keeping all the
plates spinning. Leadership is the ability to identify a new plate that needs to get up and
spinning. Jot down the things happening in your area that are solely because of you. What
other new processes, new product or new market could be developed if you were to take
the lead?

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Leadership Speed

8. Technical and Professional Expertise

Often times the lack of knowledge and experience stops work because people do not know
what to do next. Clearly people who have more knowledge and expertise are going to be
able to move faster because they know how things work and what to expect. Often leaders
rely on the expertise and knowledge of others to increase their speed. As the world increases
in complexity and information multiplies, having deep expertise can help organizations move
faster.

Learn the business. Everyone in an organization should become well versed in the
technology of the business, to the degree that this is possible. Understanding the product,
what it is, how it is made, how it is marketed and how the firm makes money is valuable.
People in functional areas (accounting, marketing, operations, etc.) obviously need to
understand their discipline and stay at its cutting edge.

Expand your horizons. Look beyond your immediate organization for what is happening
in the outside world. It becomes so easy to not look past your immediate workplace but
often solutions become stale and outdated. Those with the best technical expertise are
constantly looking at what customer, competitors and other innovative organizations are
doing to generate new solutions and to further innovate.

Take time to communicate. One of the most powerful skills for a person with technical/
business expertise to possess is the ability to communicate powerfully. This helps you
to describe what you and the organization are doing and why you are seeking certain
resources. It also helps as you explain complex problems in simple ways and to better
represent the organization wherever you go.

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2015 Zenger Folkman. All rights reserved. ROG.NPS51.16.0