I’ve often said, “if leadership doesn’t scale neither will your organization.” Experience has led me to conclude there is no greater contribution a leader can make to the enterprise than developing a true culture of leadership.
The scale is not an individual endeavor – it’s a cultural and organizational achievement that requires the right set of collaborative individual efforts. People don’t scale, but effective groups, teams, and organizations can create scale. Well-intended, but ill-equipped leaders push individuals for more output, where savvy leaders teach and mentor individuals to think strategically and create leverage, which in turn, leads to scale. One key to scale is to get leaders to understand that it’s not their job to leverage people but to create leverage for their people.
There’s a difference between acting strategically and understanding strategy. The most valuable leaders are not only astute, but they’re insightful. They don’t just think strategically, they shape strategy – they operationalize the strategy. Perhaps most importantly, they ensure the sustainability of strategic focus by developing a culture of leadership.
The most important thing to remember about leadership and scale is that true leadership is a positive contagion. If allowed to flourish, leadership will consistently reinvent itself at scale. It is only inept, insecure, and/or incompetent leadership that restricts or limits leadership to a select few rather than supporting its spread to the masses.
Team members become most valuable to an organization when their strategic skills (thinking/teaching/mentoring/coaching) are leveraged far beyond what their tactical (doing) skills could ever achieve. When individuals enlighten, inform, and empower groups to be more productive, scale is achieved.
When individuals are pushed to simply “do more,” both the quality and quantity of performance declines. The simple truth is most process glitches and production bottlenecks are individual choke points, not system errors. Scale is not a production issue, technology issue, or money issue – it’s a leadership issue.
Great leaders view each interaction, question, or even conflict as a development opportunity. Don’t answer questions or solve problems just because you can, rather teach your team how to do it for themselves. If you make a habit of solving problems for people, you simply teach them to come to you for solutions at the first sign of a challenge.
So, how do you get your organization to create scale? Stop talking about the process and start talking with your people. The following 5 steps will help you create a culture of leadership and create a scalable organization:
The take away here is great leaders don’t create a state of dependency. In fact, they won’t allow dependencies to exist – rather they mandate independent thinking and decision making. Many leaders struggle with understanding that rescuing is not the same thing as leading. To create a culture of leadership and a framework for scale, stop feeding your employees and teach them how to fish…
Thoughts?
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This article originally appeared at http://www.forbes.com/sites/mikemyatt/2015/12/06/the-1-thing-successful-companies-scale/#4febb7603ad7
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