Normal Expectations

One of many books I am in the middle of is Wooden on Leadership, written by the great UCLA coach John Wooden and published when he was 95 years old. It is an impressive, common sense guide to leadership based on his career as a basketball coach. I recommend it highly.

The thought that struck me reading it recently, though, is the stark difference between his basketball teams and any team that I have ever worked on. His teams were strict, not out of misplaced authoritarianism, but out of a single-minded drive and passion for excellence. He talks about the "Normal Expectations" for his team, including being a gentleman, on time, a team player, industrious, emotionally controlled, and unselfish.

How is that different from teams at work? Those characteristics would never be mentioned. In an individualistic society where independence  is valued above all else, people would rebel against being told that they were expected to be "industrious". We are all professionals here, right? Don't tell me what to do or how to act.

Yet excellence on the basketball court or in the meeting room require the same basics of human respect, interaction, and hard work. Very few leaders require such things of their teams, putting faith in the "professionalism" of individuals and caring only about the final work product.

Wooden is one of the greatest basketball coaches of all time because he cared not about the score, but about the details of character and behavior. The score took care of itself. Should we not be following his example?

Followership

There are lots of books about leadership out there written by leaders. Those are good, but I would like to see some stuff written for followers. After all, we are all followers, so should we not want to be better at it?

No? Why not? Because we should all aspire to leadership, not improved followership? Those things are not exclusive, though. I know of no leader who is not following someone and/or something. In fact, we can go through life without ever leading anything, but we would be hard-pressed to avoid following.

Here is a start to what I would like to see in a book on followership.

1. How to pick a leader. If I must follow, I might as well follow someone/thing worth following.
2. How to support the leader. If the leader is leading me where I want to go, I want to do everything in my power to make him successful.
3. How to lead and follow simultaneously. In any organization with more than 2 people, there is a very good chance I am leading someone at the same time I am following someone else. How do I live in the middle?
4. How to influence the leader. I suppose this is similar to leadership stuff about "leading upward" and 360 degree leadership. It is hard to take someone seriously when they write about me "leading" my vice-president. Influencing, though, makes sense.

Would you buy this book? What else should be in there?

The power of simplicity

Jonathan Fields recently posted his eleven rules for "moguls in training." It is a short list of leadership lessons based on extensive reading that he has done. I found it interesting for two reasons.

The first is that it is a pretty good list. It does a good job distilling leadership experience and theory into tag lines that are good for posters and daily reminders. They are powerful in their simplicity.

The second is how useless the list is in the absence of all the background reading. If you take that list and try to lead only on what is there, you will probably fail. If you have the background (from reading and/or experience) to understand where the lessons come from, then a short list is helpful.

It is a key thing to remember...there is power in simplicity, but only with an understanding of what lies behind it. E = mc² is one of the simplest and most powerful equations in physics. If that was all, though, anyone could be a nuclear physicist and atomic fusion would be a high school chemistry experiment. Clearly, there is more to the equivalence of matter and energy than a short equation. The power comes from summarizing complexity with a simple statement, not eliminating the complexity.

Keep this in mind the next time someone tries to share the "3 Steps to Happiness" or "15 Ways to Make Money Blogging" or any other simple formula. Simplicity is powered by underlying complexity that cannot be ignored.

Net Present Value

Net Present Value (NPV) is a powerful measure that businesses use all the time. For those that do not use it, NPV is the value of all future revenue minus all future costs, both discounted to the present day using the time-value of money. Using NPV, decisions can be made based on a longer-term view than simple up-front cost and benefit.

The trouble is, I ignore this in my everyday life. Yet it can make a huge difference. Paying twice as much for a jacket that lasts four times as long makes sense, except that I am cheap, and I rarely look beyond my wallet.

Two lessons come out of this.

1. Think about the future. It usually does not take much thought or time, but the decisions we make today matter (both purchases and otherwise).
   
2. Buy Avalanche Wear. I bought an Avalanche fleece vest many, many years ago only because it was on sale. Beyond making me think about this question, it has been my go-to mid-weight warmth in the Grand Canyon, on ski slopes, and around town. It has been the best outdoor clothing purchase I have ever made (and I have made a lot).