Tuesday, October 16, 2012

The Art of Analytics and Listening for Leadership


          One look at any book store shelf and you can find endless books on leadership. Thinking back on my profession, I have read and studied numerous cases and books that discuss leadership, decision making and on how to be a good manager. I have to say that collectively, the reading list has helped. But truth be told, in the practical world how one goes about making business decisions is very different than how one would do a case study of business problems. Why? There are many reasons but, perhaps the most apparent explanation is that in a case study or in reading a book you have 20/20 vision.  You can do Monday morning quarterbacking. You also have time to think and analyze, and you are already primed for the fact that there is a problem in the first place. Secondly, we all have to deal with office politics. You have to pick your battles, you have to be politically correct. In some cases there literally is no way to win. No practical means to solve the problem. Your choices may be limited to simply surviving.

            Perhaps the most important thing one can take away from reading business cases and in reading leadership books is to develop your sense of analytics. It is one of the weakest areas many business managers have. I should add even great managers have trouble in this area. Developing an analytical skill set is key to being a great manager, a great leader. Understanding cause and effects, relationships in business processes, financial and logistical variables. In the end it is about how well you can connect the dots that lead you to better decisions. It's also about the ability to put yourself in someone else's shoes.

            This brings me to perhaps the most important thing I use in any leadership role: "Listening". Years ago I learned a key lesson. It really does not matter what you know or how smart you think you are in business or what you think. Sometimes, it's not even important that you know how to gauge the big problems from the small ones. If you want to solve the most problems in the shortest amount of time; "listen". In particular listen to your employees, as well as your customers. A testament to this is how often I have worked with dysfunctional companies where there was little to no system at all and yet the employees got the job done. Simply because the owner or bosses listened to the employees and the employees listened to their bosses and most importantly the employees listened to one another. Despite poor accounting, poor management systems, poor internal control, poor documentation and even poor profits the company had a large client base and there were few complaints from customers. Listening and addressing the issues together with doing "whatever it takes" compensated for everything else that was wrong in the company. Perhaps Jeff Haden in this article published in Inc. magazine on Sept 4th, 2012 demonstrates one way of listening for leadership. "Do-you-pass-this-key-leadership-test"

         To end this piece I would like to repeat something a very good boss once told me; "Don't listen to the words he is saying, listen to what he is trying to tell you". Just goes to show how much psychology there is in business, this is the very same exact line I have heard marriage counselors use in trying to get spouses to understand one another. I guess this is a case of art imitating life!

Can't wait to hear your side of the story.

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