I don’t care much about those.

I’m a practical man. I don’t care how unique you are. I want to know what you are good for. So should you: knowing what kind of role suits you better will help find a place where you can be both efficient and yourself.

I have noticed that leaders end up in one of three roles, plus one extra. Yep, for all of the uniqueness of your style, I pile leaders into a handful of heaps.

Good leaders understand one simple truth about their role: it’s not about them. It is never about them. It’s about a greater cause, which itself is usually about other people.

Keeping that thread in mind, let’s have a look at my three (plus one) heaps of leaders.

The Figurehead

A Figurehead is a human incarnation of an organization, a message or a cause.

Figureheads are important because they exist to make an abstract concept relatable. It’s also to firmly keep the attention on themselves.

Granted, many Figureheads are driven by their Mount Everest-sized egos, but the best ones stay focused on the fact that it isn’t about them. Sometimes they are mouthpieces. Sometimes they are visionaries. Sometimes they are exemplars. And sometimes they are distractions.

Startups often define themselves by their CEO, who’ll take the role of a Figurehead. His role is often less to build and grow his business than to propagate his vision and draw attention to what the startup is doing.

In a time of crisis, you will often see a Figurehead taking charge and issuing orders, acting as a focal point for people to rally around. The rest of the time they will focus their leadership on vision and high-level direction rather than day-to-day execution.

The Servant-Leader

“A leader is best when people barely know he exists, when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say: We did it ourselves.” — Laozi, 6th century BCE

The Servant-Leader fundamentally understand that it’s not about him, but about others, and focus on that. Servant-leaders don’t always get the credit they deserve, but their influence can be felt wherever they go.

Servant-Leaders seems to always lead with the same question: “What can I do for you?”. They will remove impediments to other’s work, put people into learning situations for they can surpass themselves, and grow them into leaders in their own right.

Working behind the scenes, they use active listening followed by indirect action to find and remove obstacles often without anyone noticing. They try to figure out the root cause of problems rather than wasting time fixing symptoms.

Often instinctively, they will develop triadic relationships with people, meaning that instead of building one-on-one relations to control the flow of information, they will act as matchmakers between two other people who would benefit from direct contact. They build robust networks that can continue to grow without them. They mediate tough conversations. They simplify complex org chart-driven relationship by connecting humans.

Good servant-leader might do their best work discreetly, but they can have a tremendous influence over an organization. From grooming the next leaders to removing red tape and all the way to reshaping the flow of information in an organization by building networks, they can be the primary movers and shakers in the company.

All that without issuing a single direct order.

The Everyman Leader

If you don’t think you are cut to be a leader, then maybe you’d make a good Everyman Leader.

Everyman Leaders are all around you. They are the ones who see you struggle, take five minutes to teach one neat trick and show you that you can do it too. They’re the ones who will make that little bit of extra effort that will make your day. They are the ones you know you can trust when you need something done right.

Everyman Leaders can come from anywhere and do any jobs. It doesn’t matter if they handle important accounts, coordinate projects or wash dishes. They have work ethics, are genuine, helpful, and they want to make a difference, regardless of the scope of their impact.

That’s the easiest path to becoming a good leader. Just look at how you can make a difference in what you do and for the people around you. You just need to care and act.

In a time of crisis, you will notice Everyman Leaders rise to the occasion, help people around them rally and organize, and work cooperatively to resolve the part of the situation they have some influence over.

Wait, you’re missing one!

Now we come to the mysterious fourth role, the guy who barks orders and manages people.

The Boss.

During a crisis, leaders are granted authority and given control over a situation to help the organization through this challenging moment. A good leader never has to ASK for that authority: people will naturally look to the leader for guidance.

A Boss works differently. Control is the name of the game here, namely, how to achieve and keep it. To do so, they need to create situations of perpetual crisis, so they can retain their authority, and thus control, making it about them. Too much work for the capacity, predictive planning that everyone knows will be off the mark, office politics, information control, all of these are tactics to perpetuate situations of crisis artificially.

People don’t always do that consciously, and often that is how the whole organization functions. But that doesn’t change the reality of it, and that doesn’t make it right.

As such I cannot classify a Boss as a leader. Sorry. Being in charge just isn’t enough.

I know that because I was once a boss myself.

I didn’t know any better because I only operated in environments where I was tasked with keeping control over projects and teams. I wasn’t a bad boss (I’m sure opinions may differ…), but I was a crafter, planning perfect solutions and expecting proper execution. I tended to dismiss dissenting opinions, under the belief that I was in a position to know better. The organizations I worked for used all the tactics mentioned above to perpetuate states of constant crisis and trained new bosses in that environment.

I had to hit a wall before I could even realize the system was wrong. I have since dedicated my career to help organizations solve and resist crisis, to help bosses become leaders and to help people grow and develop to reach their potential.

While you don’t have to change your career as drastically as I did, you can still make a difference and become an agent of change wherever you are, in whatever position you have. Everyman Leaders do that every single day.

Maurice Lefebvre

I am a futurist, system thinker and organizational transformation expert, dedicated to easing our transition into Society 5.0. I am available as a speaker through the think tank Hivernité (www.hivernite.ca) as well as a trainer and organizational coach through Moabi Formations (www.moabiformation.com).

www.hivernite.ca

If you have ever lead a change endeavor, you had the pleasure to face some challenges. The fear and confusion brought by poor communication. The awakening of the organization’s immune system and the blanket resistance that comes with it. Or the planning is ridden with as many potholes as a Montreal’s street (believe me, that’s quite a lot).

One of the largest challenges is the sheer volume of situations you need to pay attention too, regardless of what they might be. It forces you to dilute your energy and often makes you lose sight of the goal or purpose of the change. There’s just too much noise.

The problem, however, isn’t that there’s too much to cope with. It’s just that we lose sight of what matters in all the noise. You can’t do everything, win every argument, convince everyone or even fight every possible battle.

The solution isn’t complicated, although it’s not easy. You have to learn to let go.

My younger self-learned that through a Zen practicing teacher of mine who would answer nearly all of my rants with the most frustrating questions ever: “Why?” and “Does it matter?” If you can’t answer those questions in a satisfactory way, then you have to let go.

Let go of what’s not worth fighting for

Learn to choose your battles. Some of them are decidedly worth your energy and should be fought to the bitter end. But such battles are few and far between.

Think about what you are about to fight for. Think of your reasons to fight. What you expect to get out of it. You would be surprised at how many of those important battles are in fact utterly hollow.

We get into most of our fights because of pride and stubbornness. Just like fighting things you can’t change, fights that aren’t worth the cost will just deplete your precious resources. Again, the trick is to be able to figure out the ROI of a potential fight quickly.

Compromising or switching to a different solution that accomplishes the same purpose but without the opposition is the best option for a potentially costly fight.

Let go of what you can’t do anything about

You can’t fight the wind.

Amongst the battles which are not worth the cost, fighting against constraints that will not change are the most wasteful. Compromising will not work on those unless you are the one making all the compromises.

Those immovable constraints need to be identified quickly and then dealt with with a bit of strategy. Some you can circumvent, some you leave alone, some you undermine undermined and, like the wind, some can be harnessed and made to work for you.

Keep in mind also that it is not because you cannot do anything about a constraint or situation now mean that you won’t be able to do something about it later. Context change and essential constraints can become irrelevant or beneficial.

Let go of that good idea you had

Yes, that idea was not just good, it was impressive.

Impressive enough to redo all your change plans to accommodate it? Can you sell that to everyone involved? No? It either wasn’t that good of an idea, or it wasn’t the right time for it.

Ideas are a very personal thing. We get attached quickly to the promising ones. But the better the idea, the more dangerous it is for that exact reason: it is too good to cast aside.

When such an irresistible idea comes, get into the habit of monitoring the cost of keeping it alive. The very second that cost surpass the benefits, it’s time to let it go.

Let go of that thing you really liked

Everyone have things we love and loathe to leave behind. In every change effort, you’ll find at least one such thing.

But it’s a thing. You can let go of a thing. You have a difficulty of letting some things go because of how it makes you feel, the time it saves you, or any other such underlying reason. By identifying that underlying reason you don’t want to let go of the thing, you can start looking for a replacement that fit with where you want to go.

Your thing can be many, well… things: It can be a tool, a location, a habit, a relationship. A lot of baggage makes moving forward more challenging. Find the essence and turn baggage into a springboard that will allow you to jump forward.

Focus on what’s essential

That very zen approach to change help getting rid of the noise so you can focus on what’s important. That’s the key to a successful change endeavor.

Learning to let go of the non-essential is simple to understand, but in practice, it’s hard to master. Dismissing the most trivial will come quickly enough, but even after years of practice I sometimes still struggle with letting go of whatever is close to my hard.

The practice of letting go is like a muscle. Just keep working at it, and it will become easier over time.

Maurice Lefebvre

I am a futurist, system thinker and organizational transformation expert, dedicated to easing our transition into Society 5.0. I am available as a speaker through the think tank Hivernité (www.hivernite.ca) as well as a trainer and organizational coach through Moabi Formations (www.moabiformation.com).

www.hivernite.ca

Startups are a force to be reckoned with. They face hash constraints on financial, material and human resources, they begin with no name for themselves. And yet those very constraints propels them. Their products evolve faster, they generate more buzz than anyone else and they gain market shares at an amazing speed. They call it “disruption” and if they can sustain it long enough, they will hurt you.

To be clear, I’m not talking about those startups with a focus on pure growth rather than profits in order to be bought off. Those will hurt you too, but they will disappears at some point. No, I’m talking about financially viable startups. Those are the ones that will be the mainstream companies of tomorrow. But the very way they operate means that tomorrow’s way of doing business will be very different from today’s.

It is crucial for any company to understand how those successful startups operate, regardless if you are a giant multinational, an established local company or even a startup yourself.

So, what makes successful startups so special?

They can sell an idea

Having to search for capital forces startup promoters to learn to sell. Early on, they might not even have a product yet, so they harness the power of storytelling to sell a compelling idea.

You see, no one really cares about a product or its features. Customers, like investors, care about their own story and realities. Like Kathy Sierra says in her seminal book Badass: Making users awesome, people don’t care about the features of your camera: they just want to take better pictures.

Learning to sell ideas through storytelling is a powerful skill. It requires refining a number of intangible concepts into one neatly packaged idea. This brings the added bonus of clarifying what the company is all about. It gives a clearer vision to guide the company and a sharper message to draw the targeted customers.

They have focus

Limited budgets and resources force startups to keep a clear focus. If they spread too thin, nothing will get done in a timely fashion and they will run out of money too quickly.

Sounds familiar? This exact situation happens pretty much everywhere. Many companies however have pocket deep enough to withstand a surprising amount of waste before they really start noticing.Startups keep a tight focus, which helps them deliver a clear message.

They are customer-driven

Most companies repeat like a mantra that customers are their most important concern. In the case of startups, it’s far more than rhetoric: both their company’s and product’s development are absolutely driven by their customers.

Instead of planning their products or services over several years, they use what their customers are saying and doing to understand pain points and drive improvements. They do not waste time or effort on services or feature that are not wanted or necessary.

Also, startups work in the open: when the spotlight is on you, secrets have a way to get out and get blown out of proportion. If you want to reduce the damage these secrets can cause, just don’t have any. Discuss your problems openly with your customers, ask for feedback and make your community work for you.

They experiment and learn fast

Innovation is key to staying relevant, and experimentation is key to innovation.

Startups favour numerous small and controlled experiments to increase the chances of striking gold, even in unexpected ways. Most larger companies will instead carefully plan and execute long experiments in order to test a specific theory, and often discard outlying results that can turn to be more profitable than the original experiment.

The difference between the two approaches is that between making many small bets and making a large one. With many small bets, you maximize your chance of having some success, and you drastically increase your learning opportunities.

They respond to change quickly

By innovating quickly and constantly using customers to test their products and drive their company, startups will change their plans quickly. Add a few other startups in the same space and the market itself will change quickly.

While this may sound like a nightmare to many is business as usual for startups. In fact, it is a good environment for them as they are built to adapt and they know that most other companies are not.

How fast can they adapt? Many startups working in software development will release into production several times a week to a few times daily. Those in the service industry use a franchise model internally to safely distribute decisional power across the company and provide customized reactions to events in real time.

They bet on engaged people

Most startups can’t afford to have an army of drones to execute senseless actions. They need people with initiative, who are creative enough to quickly find solutions to the problems that will inevitably rear their ugly heads.

Since they also cannot afford to have long chains of command, decisions are often taken locally. That means those running a startup must be able to trust your people to make the right decisions themselves with only the people around them to discuss it. That requires quality people and engaged people. And that, in turn, requires investing in people through mentoring, training and support.

There’s something exhilarating about working in a startup: to be part of something that grows and draws that kind of attention, to face a continuous stream of challenges and surmounting them.

People don’t join startups because of the hiring package. They join because they want to. They stay in the face of adversity because they feel they belong.

But… can we do that too?

Yes. Yes, you can.

Those characteristics can be capitalized on by all companies, regardless of the size, age, or revenue bracket. However, that capitalization will be done differently and at different level according to each company’s specific context.

All companies can become more reactive, collaborate with their customers, make their own employees amazing assets and true leaders. But it does require some change.

For companies who are using a model straight out of the industrial age, the change will be significant. Companies that are already people-first, developmental, podular, Agile or Lean will adapt much more quickly and easily. Still any company willing to undertake those changes can gain the vitality of a startup.

Maurice Lefebvre

I am a futurist, system thinker and organizational transformation expert, dedicated to easing our transition into Society 5.0. I am available as a speaker through the think tank Hivernité (www.hivernite.ca) as well as a trainer and organizational coach through Moabi Formations (www.moabiformation.com).

www.hivernite.ca