What are your plans for the new year? How will you be as intentional as possible in defining this year, as opposed to passively letting the year define you?

Here are a few thoughts for you if you’re feeling the nudge to put some stakes in the ground.

A CEO frustrated with his board.
A Board frustrated with its CEO.
A Partner frustrated with his partner.
A Partner frustrated with HIS partner.
A CEO frustrated with her COO.
A COO frustrated with his CEO.
Boy, I run across these scenarios too often. I use the word “frustrated” because it represents the middle ground between “I want to have [...]

So here are some lessons from a Leader guiding his company through crisis for a little over a year now, and getting some traction.

A partial list of what Alan Mulally inherited when he took the CEO job at Ford in the Fall of 2006 – the “Brutal Facts:”

* A divided company, actually a lot of different companies under one roof, each with a leader going in a different direction
* Tight cash flow with a real risk of running out altogether
* A built-in $3,400 expense premium on every finished product based on onerous labor costs
* Complexity of business systems that predecessors had been unable to untangle
* Infighting and turf wars among his direct reports
* Lots of elaborate plans (marketing, manufacturing, sales, product) followed by poor execution
* A talented and dedicated team of workers (the problems lay mostly with management, not the workers!)

At lunch last week in Charlotte, home to big banks reporting record losses, my friend sat down and said, “Well, at least we can celebrate Ford’s good news.”

I’m learning that effective leaders cultivate simplicity.
Simplicity begets . . . Clarity begets . . . Focus begets . . . ACTION!
When I first begin working with Leaders, here’s a sampling of questions we discuss:

How clear are you on what your organization most needs from you as Leader today?
How succinctly could your direct reports [...]