The Leadership Cycle

Dear Managers and Leaders!

I feel starting a company, even the smallest solo company, is pure leadership. You need to create and clarify your vision, define your mission, set clear objectives, plan for action, and then take action. This can be a very stressful situation if you try to do everything at once. It can be overwhelming at times, since you feel responsible for everything. Observing myself as I start my solo company, I came up with a crude, back-to-basics description of the leadership process to help me focus on the right things. It can be summarized as follows:

• Set your objectives
• Plan for actions
• Advance according to your plan for a while
• Assess where you are
• Correct course
• Advance according to your new plan for a while
• Assess where you are
• Correct course
• Advance a bit more
• ...

As you can see, this process is a cycle that repeats itself until you reach your objectives. As you assess where you are, you also need to evaluate whether the objectives you are pursuing are still valid. Things change rapidly and you must have an open mind towards changing your destination.

The time between the planning phase and the assessment can vary greatly from one individual to the next, between one methodology and another. For instance, the Agile software development methodology says that this “action time” must be very short. Other software development methodologies are not asking the same pace for assessing projects. I personally favour short action time periods because it is more forgiving. It allows you to correct course before the deadline is reached!

To assess where you are, you need to be able to measure where you are. Qualitative objectives must be turned into measurable goals to ensure that you know when you reach the objectives or when you go astray. This is essential to the success of any enterprise. If you cannot measure when you meet your objectives, when will you be able to celebrate your successes?

The one thing that this leadership cycle breaks is the illusion that everything must always be perfect for you to succeed. You can always correct course and repair your mistakes as you advance in your project. Of course, some mistakes will be tougher to correct than others, but until the deadline, you still stand a chance to succeed. Your success will be better measured by your resilience than by the amount of mistakes and problems that you encountered in your journey. I would even say that mistakes are not that important; how you, as a leader, respond to the challenges encountered is what really counts. I personally feel that this thought is reassuring and allows me to take action despite my fear of doing something wrong.

What about you dear leaders? Have you ever noticed this leadership cycle in your practice? Are you accepting mistakes and correcting course as you go? Let us know what you think by adding your comments below.

Until next time,

Remi Cote

PS: If you find these postings interesting and would like to learn more about what I can do for you and your team, then please visit www.innovachron.com or contact me directly at remi@innovachron.com.