Wednesday, January 18, 2006

Is Lineage Important in Leadership?

Today's NFL team presidents and owners are caught up on lineage. Nothing illustrates this more than the recent hiring of Eric Mangini. Eric is 33 years old and has been a career assistant to Bill Belichick and Bill Parcells. Twelve years ago he was an intern making copies and ordering pizzas with the Cleveland Browns.

His speech at the Jets press conference was filled with name dropping and statements about who he has worked for and what he believes he has learned from them. There was not much about what he HAS done.

According to the New York Times, "The Jets were not dissuaded by Mangini's lack of head-coaching credentials, focusing instead on his experience under Bill Belichick.

Mangini has worked under Belichick with three teams over 10 seasons. He also spent three seasons plugging into the expertise of Bill Parcells when Parcells was coaching the Jets.

"That's like getting your M.B.A. from Harvard, only the football version," Mangini said last year, referring to his exposure to Belichick and Parcells. "They're arguably the best professors you can get."

This hiring is tantamount to hiring one of Donald Trump's minions because you are trying to create a show about an "apprentice".

Pro's of Eric Mangini

  • Lineage (OK - he did work under Belichick and Parcells for 12 years - he may have picked up something).
  • He has been on coaching staff of three superbowl champions.
  • Actually played college football which is important to earn respect of the players.
  • There might be something to actually giving a new guy on the block a chance.
Con's of Eric Mangini
  • Youth - he is not much older than most players. He is certainly not much older than many coaches. He will have a hard time being a leader. He will have to resort to "do this because I said so" leadership style which doesn't work well with professional athletes.
  • He has not "been there". While he was on championship coaching staffs, he was not the defensive or offensive coordinator. He was the defensive backs coach.
  • OK - giving a new guy on the block a chance might work out, but he has no track record. Let him earn his stripes in the college game. There are plenty of coaches out there that have a proven record of success. Why not one of them?
Good luck, Eric!

Tuesday, January 10, 2006

How well do you know your people?

Besides their first and last names, what do you really know about your people?

Do you know what their life goals are? Do you know what their strengths and weaknesses are? If you don't really know these answers, you may want to consider something that will help you get closer to them.

Why bother, you ask? Well my guess is that you want buy in from your employees and you say you want them to work hard and produce results. For this to happen, you want them to be more than a clock watcher. You want them to care about their jobs and put in the extra bit of effort that produces results. You want them to be involved and buy in.

How do you get them involved?

Try a rotating leadership counsel that randomly selects individuals from each group/division of your company.

The purpose of the act is to meet with individuals that you might not normally meet with and solicit feedback and input into processes that they work with everyday. Too many times the leaders meet only with the section boss or supervisor and don't include the people who actually do the work and actually know the process.

Not only will this help them feel like you actually care but you will find that you are learning more about your organization and the information that you gather will enable you to make smarter decisions. In addition, I think you will find that you will start to develop a more personal relationship with those folks that share your office space.

Try it.

Wednesday, January 04, 2006

Leadership New Year's Resolution?

In addition to vowing not to eat fast food more than twice a week, why not try including a resolution to improve your leadership skills? Think back through the year and find one thing that you did poorly. If you did more than one in a less than stellar fashion, categorize them. Pick the one that will have the biggest impact. Remember to pick something that is actually possible to do. After you have made your selection, write it down and then make a list of pros and cons about it. Really think about whether this is what you want to do. What are the benchmarks you would need to achieve in order to achive this goal? Write those down. Go to your outlook or other calendar software and create alerts to yourself. Try every two months. Follow the status of your progress through out the year. At the six month mark, you should start to see results.

If not, then you are probably just hitting "remind me later" on your alerts and not really paying attention to what you set out to do... a lot like you did with the one about fastfood.