Leadership is top of mind. Every time I turn around these days I see something about leadership. Innovative leadership, open leadership and check out this title in Leader to Leader, Leading With Love in a Fear Based World, by John Hope Bryant. Leader to Leader is published by the Leader to Leader Institute formerly the Drucker foundation and some of the content is worthy of Peter Drucker’s heritage. As we all know Drucker was the father of modern business management and I still read the Daily Drucker. One of the reasons that we are hearing so much about leadership these days is because there is a clear absence of it in many parts of our lives especially in our companies. In our capitalist system there is no love in leadership and the false sense of family that many large corporations try to create is an empty ship. The new generations of employees see right through this. Although waves of innovation in technology are changing the ways we communicate and interact and how we form interrelationships, there is in my view a general overall lack of effective leadership in business and government today.

In an earlier blog post I elaborated on the overall lack of leadership and governance of our government and British Petroleum, which resulted in the largest oil spill in the history of our planet. Big business and big government are failing when it comes to leading, developing long term strategies and sustainable anything, whether it be growth, profitability and/or customer/citizen satisfaction. Small businesses on the other hand are not constrained by silos, quarterly Wall Street expectations, antiquated cultures and have the ability to create a genuine sense of family and altruistic characteristics within their employee base.

Enter the Generation Gap

This is the major challenge facing all leaders today, and each generation has their own experiences and expectations for leadership. Many leaders over the last two decades have demonstrated new extremes in self interest and selfishness that created a “culture of me,” and has undermined what the greatest generation and the baby boomers brought to business and government, loyalty. And to be quite frank, you can’t blame them.

* Greatest Generation 1925-1944
* Baby Boomers 1945-1964
* GEN X’ers 1965-1984
* Millennials 1985-2005

The greatest generation had perhaps some of the greatest leaders of the century and inspired the baby boomers who are now today’s leaders. The Gen X’ers and the Millennials whom will increasingly fill the ranks of corporate American, government and small business have witnessed the failure of leadership. They will have different expectations from leaders and will not be fooled by corporate propaganda and selfish leaders. We already see this in the explosion of the nonprofit organizations, which many GEN X’ers and Millennials are flocking too. These two generations will challenge leaders in ways that have never been seen before and they will rock the very foundation of American management, they already are. They have witnessed the failure of leadership in Washington, failure that has now led to energy dependence, environmental disaster, near financial collapse, and loss of control of our borders. I could go on.

Leadership Advantages for Small Business

One of the beauties of having a small business is that you can control your destiny. You are not constrained by the silos of preexisting corporate cultures, and shabby HR recruitment practices that plague almost every large organization. These silos and politics have become more powerful over the last several years because of the fear uncertainty and doubt emanating from the global economic restructuring. As a small business owner you have the amazing opportunity to establish and maintain your own culture, most large organizations don’t have this luxury. And you don’t have to break down silos to make people work together.

In my small business experience, leadership is best executed through example and most importantly accountability. Leaders need to be more accountable to the company and those they are leading and they need to execute a clear strategy and vision that is in the best interest of the company, not themselves. Selfishness and self interest are ubiquitous factors that are negatively impacting the performance of many large organizations today.

Leading people is something that you don’t learn thorough observation. You become a leader by leading and in many cases experiencing leadership from strong leaders, there is no substitute for this. And not everyone has the confidence and/or is willing to take on the risk and challenge of leadership. Leaders are willing to fail and most expect that they will in some shape or form along the way. That is why one of the most important characteristics of great leaders is innovation, not selfishness. As a small business manager, owner or employee you have the opportunity to not only control your destiny, but build and maintain a culture of altruism which you customers will enjoy.

One of the best video blogs series on small business leadership today is Go Daddy’s Bob Parson, http://www.bobparsons.me/index.php?ci=13338&id=-1

Management at Sea

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Managing people at sea has no room for error and your leadership skills are quickly tested in often the worst of conditions. My most difficult management challenges occurred at sea on rolling and pitching research vessels far from home and land. And I learned that it takes all kinds to run a ship and the same goes for a company, but sometimes you can’t select your crew they come with the ship. During my days at sea we worked six hour shifts, six on and six off and you learned how to sleep standing up. On a couple of occasions I was accused of snoring with my eyes open and it probably did happen. Management was comprised of a Chief Scientist, (who really did nothing other than talk with the vessels captain) and the Watch Chief who was responsible for getting all the work done.

The most difficult challenge for our team was when we started bringing the first women marine scientists to sea on ground fisheries research cruises. This is an intense cruise experience that starts out with sampling (killing) fish caught in a 100 foot Yankee otter trawl. Suddenly the net is pulled back and out pours thousands of pounds of various fish, sharks and just about everything else. Each species is weighed, measured for length, sexed and then subsamples are dissected live on deck. All this must be done before you arrive at the next station and the nets are hauled back for the next sample. In the beginning the men did all the dissection often of live fish, and women scientists were appalled at the killing.

For days us guys were called the murderers and spent most of the time covered in blood while the women scientists took the tallies and the notes. I happened to be the Watch Chief on this particular cruise and the guys started complaining about doing all the dirty work. So I challenged two women scientists to take over some of the dissection work and they accepted and before we knew it all the women stepped up to the plate and became sea going scientists. After ten days at sea every woman on the scientific staff had completed the full range of activities required at sea on this type of cruise. What I learned from this is sometimes patience is a virtue unheralded, until next time great selling and marketing in the millennium.