Compressed Air Best Practices - February 2009 - (Page 39)

Compressed Air Industry POWER PLANTS | 02/09 | Why Leaders Fail When the Best Strategies Can’t Get It Done BY JOHN BAKER A recent study reported in the Harvard Business School Press found that only one in 10 large company CEOs achieve their growth targets. Considering the enormous amount of time and resources spent annually creating the perfect strategic plan, these results point to a fundamental and expensive gap between leaders who create strategic plans and the people who are expected to execute them. Why is it, then, that leaders who boldly set robust agendas designed to inspire their people and dominate their marketplace far too often end up licking their wounds in defeat before the year is out? While each situation differs to some degree, consider these four common reasons good strategies don’t always lead to good results: 1. The “I’m the boss, so it will get done” fallacy. When the job title gets in the way of reality, failure is sure to result. The label on your business card — CEO, president, VP, director, senior manager, whatever — clouds a lot of perceptions. No matter how highfalutin a strategy is — demonstrating brilliance and shrewd marketplace acumen — execution of the plan is only as probable as the tightest bottleneck in the system. Do you want to win? If so, find where the business process is in constraint and focus your company’s resources to alleviate the logjam. The old adage, “a chain is only as strong as its weakest link,” is as true in business as it is in life. The best business strategy balances aspiration with perspiration. The humbling part of being a leader is that your fate — and the fate of your organization — lies in the hands of the least amongst your team. This doesn’t mean a leader can’t be forward-looking and motivational. An essential responsibility of a leader is to enlarge the organizational dialog to include expansive aims and aggressive targets. The irony, though, is that your performance is more closely tethered to the slowest-moving member of your team than to your expansive aspirations and best strategies. The “strategy-to-execution” process breaks down when the strategy is an ego-stroking, leadercentered document rather than one that clearly defines the value the company provides both internally to the entire team and — more importantly — to external customers. The most important question for a leader isn’t, “What do I want to do?” but rather, “What can we get done working together?” www.airbestpractices.com 39 http://www.airbestpractices.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Compressed Air Best Practices - February 2009

Compressed Air Best Practices - February 2009 Contents From the Editor Utility-Air News Compressed Air Audit of the Month Air Standards Instrument Air in Nuclear Power Plants Seven Sustainability Projects for Industrial Energy Savings The Pneumatic Advantage Personal Productivity Resources for Energy Engineers Wall Street Watch Advertiser Index Classifieds

Compressed Air Best Practices - February 2009

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