Leadership Laws

My MBA class ended a week or so ago and so I've finally had some time to think. One of the things I've been thinking about is what my 'leadership laws' should be. When given the privilege of leading other people what guidelines should I cling to? This is still a work in process, but here's what I've come up with so far.

1. Keep it Simple.
All of the great leaders I've been around have this gift. They can boil their vision down to one simple idea or sentence. They can summarize their key priorities in 3-5 bullet points. Jesus said 'love God, love people' and told stories that my 9 year old can understand. Rick Warren summarized his church philosophy in five points. Sprint's new CEO had 2 main objectives for the year. My church's purpose is simple "reach people for Christ and grow believers to be like him". Obama's vision was simplified down to one word, 'change'. I need help with this one! My leadership usually has 50 points with sub bullets under each one! :)

2. Identify and Address Problems. (Don't be a solution looking for a problem.)
The local church is often terrible at this!! Instead of focusing on and measuring progress against a problem (poverty, lack of knowledge of Jesus, lack of belief, lack of purpose) we focus on and measure our local church itself (our solution). Success then is measured by how many people attend our church rather than the impact on the community. We would do well to take Paul's advice "When they measure themselves by themselves and compare themselves with themselves, they are not wise." (2 Cor 10:12) The church is not unique here, but it was the clearest example I could think of.

3. Do Something Different
"If you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you always got." It is amazing how many times we don't do anything different and expect different results. We say we will just try harder. Trying harder usually doesn't work. No one sets out to fail at a task. People generally don't fail because they didn't try; they fail because they did something wrong. Leaders need to figure out what was wrong, and do something about it!

4. Build Trust
Carl Peterson ... probably don't need to say more than that for KC Chiefs fans. When leading, I always want to assume the best in people, and explain my thought processes. These two things build trust. Carl rarely assumed the best in people (see Jared Allen) and he rarely explained what he was thinking. Instead he talked around everything with blatant arrogance that let everyone know he knew more than they did. I've found that most people will follow you and accept a decision they disagree with if they just get a transparent view into why you made the decision. Carl's approach had people in my office literally cheering when he was fired.

In following principle 1, I guess that's all the rules I should have. Like I said earlier, these are a work in progress ... but I think I'm getting close.