Leadership Summit - Colin Powell

From the streets of Harlem to the Oval Office, General Colin Powell has met the challenges of leadership at every stage of his remarkable life. Today, he is one of the most admired public leaders in the world. Colin Powell was the U.S. Secretary of State from 2001 to 2005 under President George W. Bush. Prior to that, he served as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 1989 to 1993, during which he oversaw the invasion of Panama and Operation Desert Storm. In 1997, Powell founded America’s Promise — The Alliance for Youth to improve the lives of children from all socioeconomic backgrounds. The author of the best-selling memoir, My American Journey, Powell speaks regularly on his improbable career arc and the leadership lessons he has learned along the way.

Highlights of the interview focusing on the Powell Principles of Leadership:

• Leaders should promote a clash of ideas. What’s the point of having people work for you if they can’t produce a clash of ideas. Powell wants subordinates to argue with him. Clash with the boss. There will come a point when the decision is made by the leader and no more clash of ideas and now execute it with passion. The leader has lots of realities to balance in on the decision. Create a noisy system. Argue and challenge. People realize that he wants what you know.
• Plans don’t accomplish work; only people get things done. Put the people who implement in the best situation possible to succeed. Commander come up with 1/3 of plan and leave 2/3’s for the commanders on the field. Asked some people on the frontlines to have direct line to him to tell him what’s really working and not working. Let subordinates not to feel threatened by people who talk directly to him. Go back to the person on the frontlines after they you’ve implemented something they brought to your attention.
• Reward your best performers; get rid of non-performers. Hard to do, but prune the organization because the good performers know it and become discouraged. Re-train, re-assign or fire.
• Be prepared to disappoint and anger people. You can be liked and be effective if you check your ego at the door.
• Check your ego at the door. If your idea isn’t implemented, don’t take it personally. The leader needs people like this.
• Make sure you have fun along the way. Having some fun settles the mind. Loves working on cars because come to the end with a solution. Beginning and ending, unlike so much of the other things he does.
• “People call me the black Secretary of State. I look around and say, ‘Is there a white one somewhere?’” He came into the army during the big integration push and told he would be measured only by performance. He never forgot that if he’d come in five years earlier, he wouldn’t have made it to chairman. But many who went before chose to serve even though the opportunity wasn’t there with the hope that some day it would be different. “I am first and foremost a product of my family and community.” Expectations and shame. We didn’t go through all we went through so that you’d do nothing with your life. You don’t want to go to college? Doesn’t matter, you’re going anyway. You’re of this family. Don’t shame us. Never got beat, just told he shamed the family. Would have preferred a beating.
• Perpetual optimism is a force multiplier. On the field, always looking for force multipliers. Optimism is infectious. When the leader starts to see the way through, it’s infectious. Can’t be spinning. Has to be real.
• Things always look better in the morning. Get a good nights rest and start the next day optimistically. Every morning had staff meeting and asked what is going on, something I need to know. Half-hour every morning. Looked into the eye of each persona and see how they’re doing. Leader then projects confidence. The essence of all interpersonal interaction between leaders and followers is trust by giving clear goals, inspired them, acted unselfishly and with integrity.
• Avoid war if at all possible. Always trying to find a way to avoid it if possible. It’s not just losses on our side. “They’re all our kids.”
• On the actual battlefield everything is compressed but have to use the same process of analysis. “No plan survives contact with the enemy.” The enemy has also been planning and analyzing your strengths and weaknesses. Takes good thinking and great instincts. Someone rushes in with news of cataclysmic event and have to make a judgment call whether could be or not.
• Leadership is lonely. Powell would call Norm S. every day just to talk to him, so they would have someone for a few minutes and not be so alone. Became the only guy they could blow off to. Pastors need this because of having to keep so many confidences.
• The church should take the lead on social issues. Responsibility to educate and bring along young people without becoming politicized or partisan. Obligation to go out into the highways and by-ways. Has to go beyond their own wealthy environment and go to those who are poor and needy.
• Focusing on youth work. That’s what he’s done for 35 years. He wants to make “soldiers” out them—to have expectations, sense of shame… Has been matching is affluent church kids with poorer kids. What saves kids is someone coming alongside a hurting kid and telling them you won’t let their life be wasted.
• All of us have a debt of service we can't completely pay. Make a living, but give back.

Leadership Summit - Michael E. Porter

Michael E. Porter is one of the world’s foremost authorities on competitive strategy and an expert in relating his academic research to the areas of leader development and management theory.

Michael E. Porter is the Bishop William Lawrence University Professor at Harvard Business School. He is the author of 17 books and the creator and chair of The New CEO Workshop, a program for newly appointed CEOs of billion-dollar corporations. Porter’s foundational ideas on competitive strategy and leadership are taught at virtually every business school in the world. He frequently works with global issues and recently devoted considerable attention to understanding and addressing the problems in health care evident in the U.S. and abroad.

I love seeing the surprise in speakers at the quality of the Summit.

• How do you do well at doing good? Very hard. Our activities need to be effective.
• Starting looking at web sites in WCA and found an astonishing number of organizations trying to do good in all kinds of areas. Great commitment, passion and money. It’s one of the things that makes America great after being all over the world. Americans don’t wait for government to come in and help.
• But too many organizations get involved in a lot of things are reactive and unfocused so they don’t get truly good results. Tragic because so many real needs. We need strategic thinking to do this well. Too often in churches and other such organizations the strategy switch gets turned off. At best often ineffective, but sometimes make things worse. Think in terms of results.
• The right mind set is not philanthropy but delivering a service to a customer (someone you’re trying to help). Have to think about how to add value to that customer.
• Too often the help is more about the congregation than it is about the recipients. The act of giving is laudable but not an end itself.
• How do we change this mindset? Four questions in community activity:
• Question 1: Have we really defined clearly what our goals are? Goals for serving the community are not obvious. What’s the goal a homeless shelter? House people for one night or year? Do we want to help them not be homeless anymore? Goals determine strategies. Social benefits per dollar expended. The alternative is to give the money or volunteer time to a pro and let them do it. Society is taking a ride with us if it’s tax deductible. Have to measure how well we’re doing.
• Question 2: What set of community services and needs are we going to try to address? More is not better! Tend to go with everything people want to do and not actually achieve any benefit. There are thousands or worthy causes. Worthiness is not the basis of choosing because all causes are worthy. Part of choosing has to do with passions, but not the final basis. It has to be based on where you can add the most social benefit/value with the resources you have. For example, what if you discovered that it cost you $100 for each meal you feed a homeless person? Send them to a restaurant!
• Series of questions to narrow down: What are the most important needs in your community? Other communities you care about? What other organizations and institutions are available to meet those needs? If someone else is doing a great job, support them rather than duplicate and fragment the help. What capabilities and resources do we have as a congregation? Talents, connections, etc. Where can we do more than just giving money (and unskilled labor)? Key question. It’s great when a Ph.D. financial professional goes out and builds a house, but is this the best use of their time and talent? Maybe they can work with city leaders to help with strategies to help the poor. Where do we have passion because can’t sustain it without it? Can we get some synergy?
• Question 3: In each area, what’s our strategy? Most organizations can’t articulate it. Essence of strategy is how to create maximum value for that population.
• First, have to avoid three traps: Confuse strategy with the goals. Strategy addresses how. Focus on only one part of the strategy. Feel satisfied with high minded but not strategic statement.
• To create strategy have to be clear/specific/exact about the goals.
• Make sure you have a solution model that makes sense. Relief or development? Both legitimate but be clear about which one. Need sustainable solutions.
• Have to think systemically about what needs to be done to address this social need. Best providers focus on structure and systems (a value chain). For example, in HIV/AIDS care, most cost effective to have workers go to homes to make sure the medication is taken twice per day so not build immunity. And have to think about related diseases and health issues.
• Things that get in the way of strategic choices: Lack of clarity in goals. Multiple, conflicting goals and no consensus. Driven by passion/personal preferences and not effectiveness. No attempt to measure performance or costs. Inability to make trade-offs. Inability to stop anything.
• Question 4: How do we create alignment? How do we get the congregation aligned around these choices?
• Government can’t solve all the problems and meet the social needs. We will have to solve the problems in our communities and other needy communities. Leaders must see positively impacting our communities as core to our mission and can’t focus on just what happens in church. Leaders job to mobilize the congregation to do good. But leaders have to do this well with real strategic thinking.