1. Business Leadership
Conference:
Tg. Mures, Romania
With the Support of The Post-Privatization Foundation
September 29, 2010
Facilitator: Anthony Silard,
President, The Executive Leadership Institute
www.execleaders.com

2. Leadership Session:
The Flexible Leader:
Finding the Balance
BetweenBetween
Flexibility and Control
COPYRIGHT CSL 2009

3. Leadership Principle:
1)Hire the best.
2) Agree on goals.
3) Get out of the way.
COPYRIGHT CSL 2009

4. Goal vs. Strategy
“Tell them what you want, reward them for
giving it to you, and get out of the way.
That’s my strategy in a nutshell.”
-- Gordon Bethune-- Gordon Bethune
COPYRIGHT CSL 2009

5. Goal vs. Strategy
“Find the best staff that you can afford
and hire them, because it’s the staff
that touches children and family lives.
That’s the first thing. The second thingThat’s the first thing. The second thing
is to make sure that all of your
programs have clear goals that are
measurable. And the third thing is
get out of the way.
Let the staff do their work.”
-- Exec. Director of a dropout prevention programCOPYRIGHT CSL 2009

6. Coach or Commander?
“I would assign a task and say, ‘I’d like for you to get back
to me in thirty days on this.’ I was naïve enough to wait
thirty days and they hadn’t done anything. I would get
angry and dismiss them And then I learned the people
I was employing in their place very often weren’t as
good as they were. People have to be reminded.
They have to be pushed.”
-- John Johnson, Founder, Ebony Magazine
COPYRIGHT CSL 2009

7. Flexibility and Trust
“If you suspect a man, don’t employ him,
and if you employ him, don’t suspect him.”
-- Ancient Chinese Proverb
“I believe if you hire a man to do a job, you
ought to get out of the way and let him do
it. If you doubt his ability, you shouldn’t
have hired him in the first place.”
-- Ray Kroc, Former CEO, McDonald’s Corporation
COPYRIGHT CSL 2009

8. Alfred Sloan
• Transformed GM into the largest industrial• Transformed GM into the largest industrial
company in the world and the automobile
industry leader.
• Expanded number of GM employees from
25,000 to 6 million
• Increased annual sales revenue from $270m to
$14.6 billion.
COPYRIGHT CSL 2009

9. Alfred Sloan
“From decentralization we get initiative,
responsibility, development of personnel,
decisions close to the facts, flexibility – in
short, all the qualities necessary for anshort, all the qualities necessary for an
organization to adapt to new conditions.
From coordination we get efficiencies and
economies [of scale].”
COPYRIGHT CSL 2009

10. Gordon Bethune
• From Worst to First: Orchestrated one of the greatest• From Worst to First: Orchestrated one of the greatest
turnarounds in airline history – including eleven straight
quarters of record profits and a total profit of $556m
• Two years after being named worst airline in the
industry, Continental leaped from last to third best in
DOT quality indicators
• Continental chosen by BusinessWeek as stock of
the year
COPYRIGHT CSL 2009

11. Goals vs. Rules
“The job of a supervisor isn’t to look over
people’s shoulders. It’s to hire good people
and let them do their jobs!....It’s always
better to give employees goals rather thanbetter to give employees goals rather than
rules. Goals allow them to focus on results,
rules suggest they should worry more about
compliance than any other factor – which is
counter-productive.”
-- Gordon Bethune
COPYRIGHT CSL 2009

12. Flexibility Strategy #1:
Interact Less with Your
Employees at theEmployees at the
Transactional Level
and More at the
Transformational Level
COPYRIGHT CSL 2009

13. HRM in 6 Steps
1) Agree with each employee on their primary goal.
2) Tell them how the goal will be measured.
3) Tell them what the rewards will be.
4) Give the employee a few days or a week to design4) Give the employee a few days or a week to design
their own strategies to achieve the goal.
5) Ask the employee to answer the questions in the
Goal vs. Strategy Template.
6) Schedule a ‘Strategy Meeting’ with the employee.
COPYRIGHT CSL 2009

14. Goal vs. Strategy Template:
Doing the Ordinary Extraordinarily Well:
Uncommon Focus and Continuous Learning
Name:
Primary Goal:
1) Why is this goal crucial to the achievement of our mission?
2) List the strategies you will employ to reach your goal, in the order in which you plan to
carry them out.
3) How are these strategies different from those you used before? Please explain, and
describe what you learned from the previous strategies you employed.
4) Why do you believe these strategies will work?
5) How will you measure your progress? Please indicate measurable outcomes you will aim
for, and the dates you plan to achieve them.
6) What obstacles do you anticipate that may obstruct your progress? How will you overcome
these obstacles?
7) What additional resources will you need to employ these strategies?COPYRIGHT CSL 2009

15. Flexibility Strategy #2:
Deliberate
Rather ThanRather Than
Judge
Staff-designed Strategies
COPYRIGHT CSL 2009

16. Flexibility Strategy #3:
Partner
andand
Mentor
Rather Than
Manage
COPYRIGHT CSL 2009

17. Rewritten Leadership Principle
1) Hire the Best.
2) Agree on Goals.
3) Mentor on Strategy.
4) Get Out of the Way. (Encourage the staff-4) Get Out of the Way. (Encourage the staff-
person to implement and then evaluate
the success of each strategy.)
5) Go to #3.
COPYRIGHT CSL 2009

18. Identify Your Own
Leadership Style
Put an ‘X’ where your personal leadership
style falls:
___________________________________
Coach Conductor Commander
Encouraging Flexible Controlling
COPYRIGHT CSL 2009

19. Personal Flexibility Inventory
Encouraging Flexible Controlling
Work
Family
Confident
Family
relationships
Friendships
Intimate
relationship
Relationship
with self
COPYRIGHT CSL 2009

20. Flexibility Strategy #4:
If a staff-person’s strategy is
within one
standard deviation
of what your own would beof what your own would be
(within the 2/3 of likely strategies
closest to what you would do
yourself) then leave it alone.
Let them give it a try.COPYRIGHT CSL 2009

21. WWW.EXECLEADERS.COM
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