Leadership Driving Around

As a kid, I learned a lot about work driving around with my boss in his plumber’s truck. He was doing the work, sharing his timesaving, worksaving experience. I learned a perspective for thinking I’ve kept and added to for forty years.

I shared that with a woman who runs a large insurance brokerage. She thought about it and said she makes a point of having new interns follow her around as she is working for the same reason.

Leadership isn’t criticizing first attempts, it’s about demonstrating world class performance.

Sugarland’s Down In Mississippi (Up To No Good) lyric,

Hammer down, here we go
Runnin' for the riverboat
All you're gonna see is asses and elbows

is a portrait of a junior watching an effective leader.

Leadership is by example, not controlling others.

Support for a leader is natural, stomping it out is usual.

Joy’s Law - “No matter who you are, most of the smartest people work for someone else.”

Early And Late

Slow observed that golf bets are won before the first hole and after the eighteenth.

I am ten minutes to an hour early for group meetings, depending on the meeting. If they are important enough for me to attend in the first place, I want to have sufficient time to work with everyone who has something for me.

Similarly, if I am unfamiliar with the rhythm of a meeting, I’ll set aside a half hour after the performance to make sure I’m available for gain.

Some meetings profitably continue for an hour after they finish and others have people rushing for the doors when the buzzer goes off. I learn which is which from experience.

There’s a rhythm to just being present. If I don’t have an immediate activity, I’m just available, which attracts people who need to see me.

I had a nominal superior who used to frown when I would leave for a monthly industry meeting an hour early. He liked to be busy with internal urgent/not important crises.

“Well, save me a seat,” he would say.

Then he would get there late, while I was running the nametag table, working with the audience. I always got back to the office after he did.

That continued to bother him at an unconscious level, and every month he had to think it through again.

Coming back later didn’t bother me. I went to the meeting to work with people who came, and if that didn’t just occur during the scheduled time, what did I care?

One day he asked me why I consistently got such easy access to the top people in our market.

There’s things I need to do by myself, things I need to do with my team, but most forward motion comes from working with others. Joy’s Law is ““No matter who you are, most of the smartest people work for someone else.”

Working with the smartest people is the hardest to schedule tightly. Forming a better idea of optimal scheduling is easier on me.

Please join us at the Capital Technology Management Hub on February 12 at 6:30 for 300 seconds of Rainmaker 18 – Leadership, Technology, and Change opening for Michael Clark presenting Social Media: Evolving In The Workplace at TeqCorner