Smart Business Magazine, Oct 2012

6 Smart Business Indianapolis October 2012 BUREAUCRACY BLUES How to revitalize your organization by improving your brand even by small steps Is your leadership style bureaucratic If your organization has grown quickly recently merged with another company or has been around longer than 10 years chances are good it is If your company is run as a bureaucracy I can guarantee the layers of leadership and sign offs make any kind of change more difficult and frustrating than it has to be and evolve or die is the mantra of todays most successful companies When there is an issue that needs to be addressed dont make a new policy or rule Find ways to evolve to take on the issue at hand Be inclusive not autocratic Ask for input at all levels Share your vision One good way to move from a competent to a skilled leader is by sharing your vision with your team Its not just reciting the mission statement on the wall Im talking about your vision for your company the one you are passionate about Share it in person with a small group or your entire company Make it known whats important to you what drives you and where you are headed Your team needs clarity Management consultant Lee J Colan said Without a compelling cause employees are just putting in time Their minds may be engaged but their hearts are not Meaning precedes motivation Once your team members know where you want to go they will help get you there Break through bureaucracy It stifles new ideas and can strangle growth Instead lead with change in mind Disregard dissent In order to create change you must be able to boldly ignore dissent to change The great historic politicians generals and humanitarian leaders all got this Change is made by people who go against the flow and who embrace throwing a curveball to get an organization or an entrenched idea unstuck and moving in a different direction Give yourself and your company the power to invent anew Start with a completely blank whiteboard Generate new understandings by considering the unnerving the contentious the wild To create new ways and means to a new end be open to whats possible and maybe what doesnt seem possible Change doesnt have to be difficult or scary Ignore the naysayers and boldly see what lies ahead on the unexplored path The truth is that everything changes and the changes are coming faster and more frequently Companies such as IBM fall to Dell And Dell to Microsoft And Microsoft to Apple BlackBerry to iPhone and so on As soon as you think your brand is exceptional it gets harder to create real innovation because you are locked into the now There are very few exceptions to this Apple being one Thats largely because its hard to make changes when the wow is working for your product at the moment Build your brand Dont drink your brand Kool Aid Always always improve your brand Be sure your brand continually re earns attention and reconnects with its audience Make lots of small fine tuned changes that hone in on whats becoming important to your customer As hockey great Wayne Gretsky said Skate toward where the puck is going rather than where it is Ive known a lot of business leaders who see business as a battlefield Its us against them They build armies of employees and demonize competitors as enemies There can be only winners and losers Even customers must be conquered I dont think business is a battlefield I think real leaders see business as an ecosystem where the most diverse company is the most likely to thrive They create teams rather than troops and establish offices that arent rigid places where employees take orders Instead they are open to creating teams that share ideas and see change as opportunities for growth True leaders are even open to creating partnerships with other companies yes even competitors Firms that are light on their feet and adaptable to changing circumstances are the ones that are the most successful And a pleasure to work with Effective Leadership David Harding DAVID HARDING is president and CEO of HardingPoorman Group a locally owned and operated graphic communications firm in Indianapolis consisting of several integrated companies all under one roof The company has been voted as one of the Best Places to Work in Indiana by the Indiana Chamber of Commerce Harding can be reached at dharding@ hardingpoorman com For more information go to www hardingpoorman com Click or scan or scan to read more columns by David Harding