Pacific Innovation & Leadership

Destructive leaders stubbornly rely on what worked for them in the past. When they find their company in decline, they revert to what they regard as tried-and-true methods. They do not consider how much the environment has changed. Instead of considering a range of options that fit the new circumstances, these leaders point to their past successes as the only point to reference. They cling to past “defining moments” – - what they are best known for and makes them special. They become unable to learn because they have learned one particular lesson too well.

Charismatic Dominance

Destructive leaders are consummate spokespersons, obsessed with the company image. They regularly display their remarkable charisma before the media. Their public persona inspires confidence amongst all employees and stakeholders. The problem is amongst the addictive accolades, their management efforts become shallow and ineffective disguised by the appearance of accomplishing things. The line between talking good performance and demonstrating same becomes blurred. Devotion to public relations leaves little time to attend to the critical details of the business. Further, as the company’s image becomes their top priority these leaders encourage financial reporting practices that promote that image. Financial accounting becomes a control tool. The culture becomes one of the entire company supporting public relations.

All Ahead Full

Destructive leaders underestimate obstacles. Typically they become so enamored with their vision of what they want to achieve, they completely underestimate the difficulty of actually getting there. When the real obstacles surface, they recklessly plunge full steam ahead into the abyss. Awesome expansion is rammed forward amidst a sea of bright red ink. They fail to hold back or reevaluate their course of action often because of an enormous need to be right in every important decision they make. Admitting to fallibility is not an option but believing in their own magic is. Recognizing that escalating commitment is getting out of hand becomes impossible. Courage in the face of adversity can be most devastating, and in fact, foolhardy.

In many ways, we might be right to ignore competition. Keeping our eye on the other guy tends to keep our focus on our “in common” activities. That tends to “sameness” that promotes commoditization and margin erosion in our similar offerings. By contrast if we focus on the “jobs-to-be-done” in our market, we will go where no one has gone before. We need to know what frustrates, scares and delights our customers. We need to be able to make their life easier and simpler. For that they will cheerfully pay us a premium. If we will live in their world, they will live in ours. So first we keep our customers happy, satisfied, by optimizing our current Performance Engine. Then second we love them by building new engines that will bring them what they’ve never had.

Building new engines, new S-Curves is critical to our growth, for without organic growth, we first atrophy and then later die. It’s all about direction. However, putting together a new performance engine is anything but easy. Chris Trimble says “Organizations are not designed for innovation. Quite the contrary, they are designed for ongoing operations”.