Your Legacy

With the passing of the infamous and legendary performer, Michael Jackson, I have been thinking a lot about legacies. For someone like Michael Jackson, there is plenty of documented evidence to seal his place in history. From epic music videos to great humanitarian efforts, Michael Jackson has impacted millions of people across the globe. After watching hours of footage about the singer’s life, there is one thing that I cannot forget. His life was no accident. His greatness was on Purpose. Michael Jackson set out to be the best and therefore he was (and still is) in so many ways considered the best.

My question to you is: what are you setting out to do? Are you leading on purpose or by accident? I am not talking about managing; leading is tremendously different. I am talking about setting goals and setting your team up to win, getting to know your team and building on their skills. Responsible leaders build bridges. Bridges between YOU (the leadership) and them (the team). In order to build that bridge you must open the lines of communication and be willing to do the work after the talking is over.

Set out to be great. Set out to be the best. Decide how you want to be remembered and start making steps toward Your legacy.

Responsible Leaders Set You Up to WIN

As a responsible leader, you need to understand the idea behind quick wins. These are small victories on the way to a BIG change. As you well know, change is gradual and can sometimes take years to draw to completion. There has to be some type of mechanism in place to keep the team motivated. As a leader, it is your responsibility to keep the morale of the team up and the momentum moving in the right direction.

If you (the leader) promise that the first cost reduction will come in 12 months and it occurs as you predicted, that’s a win. In small companies, the first results of an effort are often required (by management) in about 6 months. In big organizations, some wins are required by eighteen months.

As a responsible leader, you must understand the characteristics of a good quick win in order to ensure your team gets them. A good quick win has three characteristics:
1. It’s visible; people can see for themselves whether the result is real or just hype. Unfortunately, people are more apt to see the negative than the positive. It is your job to showcase the positive as often as possible.
2. It’s unambiguous; there can be little argument over the result. There doesn’t need to be a lot of interpretation. It needs to be crystal clear what the results are and the benefits of said results.
3. It’s clearly related to the change effort. NO wasted effort! Nothing ruins a team’s morale more than to think their leader is wasting their time just to get kudos. Ensure that every task has a purpose. Make your team’s efforts count.

Quick wins help organizations in several ways. Here are the top 4 ways they help (By the way, as responsible leaders you should know all the benefits of the wins you try to implement):
Quick wins…
1. Provide evidence that sacrifices are worth it: Wins greatly help justify the short-term costs involved (this helps to keep management happy). They show people that their sacrifices are paying off as well as build team morale.
2. Help fine-tune vision and strategies: Quick wins allow YOU (the responsible leader) to validate your ideas. What is learned can be extremely valuable. Sometimes the vision isn’t right. More often, the strategies need some tweaking. Without quick wins, such problems can appear far too late in the game.
3. Keep bosses on board: Provides management with evidence that the change effort is on track. From middle management all the way up to the board of directors, if they lose faith, the effort is in DEEP TROUBLE.
4. Build momentum: Turns neutral spectators into supporters and reluctant supporters into active helpers.

Bottom line, teams want to thrive even in these days of great change and stress. The problem is most teams are not patient enough to wait years to see the fruits of their labor pay off. As a responsible leader, it is your job to ensure your team does not feel like their work is in vain. You to have build into your project schedule those quick wins for your team, for yourself and for your organization as a whole. If you do, you will establish yourself as a true leader. And that is what you want, isn’t it?