Some things are the same everywhere. I’m writing this on the flight home from Antigua, following our Rotary project. Last week we were at one of our favorite schools, a prestigious private primary school.
We had some issues with the Internet, so I talked to one of the non-teacher employees about it and asked if the principal, Mrs. Pringle, was still there that day. He replied that she no longer worked at the school and said if she did still work there these issues wouldn’t be happening.
Leadership is leadership whether it’s a large business, small business, non-profit, or a school. Good leaders keep the situation under control when “things happen.” And, the employees know (a good leader from an ineffective one).
Here’s a different example. Because we didn’t do this project last year all of our students were first timers. So, no experience. While the teacher assigned team leaders, after a few days we could see changes. On one or two of our teams the natural, take charge kids stepped up and very quickly we had the real leaders. They were the ones who not only knew what they were doing but did what needed to be done and instructed others on what to do.
In your business do you see people stepping up? Business owners, do you allow this to happen (employees taking charge)? I ask because a dependency on the owner is something I’ve seen a lot of lately and it usually means a lack of delegating. Combined with customer concentration issues (the owner has the relationships with the few customers totaling 75% of annual revenue). It’s a huge issue, it scares business buyers and banks.
“One of the hardest things in life to learn are which bridges to cross and which bridges to burn.” Oprah Winfrey *
* Owners, burn the bridge where you control everything and cross the delegation bridge.
