Leadership is a topic critical to project management success. There are many voices on how to be a leader in this environment. Some advice is platitudes. Some are obvious. Some are nonsense.
In a previous blog Leadership Lessons, Shackelton demonstrates how to lead in the presence of not only uncertainty but live threatening danger. Rarely do we encounter danger on our projects. Maybe a dangerous environment. Rocky Flats was dangerous in specific locations. The book Making the Impossible Possible: Leading Extraordinary Performance - The Rocky Flats Story contains examples of this type of leadership. I served as VP Program Management in the ICT organization and experienced first hand the impact of this leadership.
|
General Honore directed the search and rescue efforts in New Orleans, La. in September 2005 following Hurricane Katrina. A tough-speaking, Take -charge Army general at the time. Since retiring, his new role as a public speaker, business consultant, and advisor on matters related to disaster preparedness and recovery has become a public focal point to leadership in times of trouble. An opening quote is Life is Tough, but it's tougher when your stupid - John Wayne. He speaks about the sure-fire antidote to stupidy - Great Leadership and the current problems in politics, public services, the healthcare systems, clean water, nature, the education systems gun violence, infrastructure decay. In our current COVID crisis, he speaks of the stupidity of failing at the simplest tasks of testing, data gathering, getting the right equipment to the right spot. Anyone who thinks logistic is tactics has never fought in a battle, logistics is STRATEGY. The stupidity of the US, State, and Local government's response to COVID is an example of stuck on Stupid. |
|
|
Honore's definition of leadership is the art and science of influencing others to willingly follow. The key work is willingly. This is not a military definition, this is a general life definition. There are lots of books on leadership that describes all the processes of being a good leader, and how to apply those processes to groups to produce success. We all know the command and control style leadership has little chance of success outside of the military because followers must follow. In the interconnected world of business today, followers can find a new job in a short time. Charismatic leaders can motivate their followers. Like JFK, but their influence is short-lived. People follow, or appear to follow - because of the power of the leader, not because of the ideas the leader professes. As soon as the leader is gone, or stumbles, or starts making bad decisions, their influence immediately goes away. A solider's saying is The video and audio have to match. |
|
|
Life in an infantry company at war is difficult to describe to someone who has not experienced the rigors of combat. The associations that characterize soldiers' life form a far more intimate relationship than between husband and wife. Survival rests on the individual. Soldiers will give the basic forms of human sustenance to their comrades to see them not suffer. In our civilian world, we have no such experiences, but Winter's example has value to business and projects. As Pyle wrote, the ties that grow between men (and women) who live savagely and die relentlessly are ties of great strength. I served in Vietnam in the same rear echelon area as portions of E Company, 2nd Battalion, 506th Parachute Regiment, 101st Airborne Division (the Band of Brothers from WWII), and met some of their leaders. That experience has informed my attempts to lead. Creating Fellowship is the Foundation of Leadership everything else is tactics |
These books are not for everyone and many may object to the black and white approach to leadership. But they provide working examples of creating fellowship, which without fellowship there is no leadership. It that simple and that complex.
As a political statement, much of our current problems in life, business, and the government at all levels, is we're missing leaders who have never experienced the adversity of others or for themselves. And because of that fail to understand the fellowship principle.
