Leading from the Edge

“Lead from the front” is attributed to Audie Murphy, America’s most decorated soldier & film-star. It has two meanings, both to lead by example and physically, to be in the front line and lead the troops as they advance.

While both of these are undeniably valuable attributes, I’m going to argue here for the more subtle skill of ‘Leading from the Edge’; and likewise I’m going to give it two meanings: being on the edge of new thinking and holding the edges of the space in which people work.

The edge of new thinking

Let’s first look at being on the edge of new thinking. If you as the leader aren’t there, then who in your organisation is paying attention? The dual role of the leader is both to create the vision and to see it executed. If you are not at the edge when you create the vision then how can it be the best possible vision?

This is not to say that every vision should be outlandish or extreme, far from it. It is to say that unless the edge is included when forming the vision then it’s likely to be mundane, middle-of-the-road and, worst of all, open to being overtaken by a competitor who understood what was happening at the edge.

In creating visions the byword is not safety first – it’s safety last. Go and explore how your business might be, play with the different options, get a feel for what is happening in economics, politics, technology that might make a difference. And only after that bring back in the pragmatics and the common sense and apply the rules of safety.

Holding the edges

Most of us discover from bitter experience that teenagers resist rules and love boundaries. They hate being told what to do, but deeply value knowing that there are some boundaries of safety out there which are being held for them.

And many of us are still teenagers at heart, we still hate being told what to do; and we still value knowing that someone is minding the boundaries.

Knowing where those boundaries are, and keeping them is probably the most important role of any leader and one of the least well recognised. Having decided that we are in this business – not in that business, the boundary must be held; having decided that we do business with this kind of client in this kind of way, the boundary must be held; having decided that we have this code of ethics, the boundary must be held. If these boundaries are not held, then we are no longer in the business that you chose to lead.

In practice these two meanings are the opposite sides of the same coin. As leader you set the vision for the business; then you define and hold the boundaries of the vision. Where those boundaries are will determine a great deal about your task as a leader. If they are closer than before, you narrow the business, go for greater focus, for lower costs; then much of your time will be spent in policing the boundaries. If you make the boundaries bigger – go closer to the edge, then your biggest task will be to encourage people to make use of the extra space and not to limit themselves to their previous conception of where the boundaries lie. More likely, you will shift the focus and will have to juggle the role of policeman and shepherd.

I remember clearly one of my most successful business roles when I created my first ‘change programme’. I set the boundaries – we will use this methodology (MRPII as it happens), and this software, and only I can approve changes to the software – and I don’t intend to approve any. Over the 18 months or so of the project the business changed from looking for a third off-site warehouse for its surplus stock to running less than one-half of one of the on-site warehouses. How the team did it I don’t know in detail – I do know that the boundaries that I set required them to examine every part of the business, that every time they came up against something that the software ‘couldn’t do’ the easy (but expensive) option of ‘coding a fix’ wasn’t available and they had to go back and re-examine the business processes.

Another smaller example, though no less successful was with my colleague Helen who regularly used to drop in my office and say ‘We have a problem’. We’d then sit down together and work through it, most often successfully. One day I thought more carefully about this and the next time she came in I said ‘OK, I’m sure you can solve it.’ She blinked a little, nodded and went away. Within half-an-hour she was back with a perfectly good solution.

The first of these demonstrates mostly what I’ve called policing the boundary, holding the line against all the logical pressures for ‘just a small change’. The second is an example of ‘shepherding’, encouraging Helen to go and find her own solution without relying on my contribution.

My third example takes us back to the edge of new thinking. From that place it was quite evident that the business had a throughput time that was far too long. We actually took a few seconds to transform our raw material into finished product – maybe half-an-hour if you took all the surrounding processes into account. Yet typically the turn-around time from receiving raw material to sending it out again as finished product was well over a month.

From this point on the edge it was obvious that 24 hours was an achievable turnaround. We floated this to the business and were met with stunned silence. This place on the edge was as far from the present as the other edge of the galaxy. In a hurried re-thinking we changed our ‘24 hours’ to ‘a week’, that met with some acceptance – as a remote possibility. In fact two years later seven days was common place and 24 hours had become a plausible target. But if we hadn’t started out from the edge then we’d still have a turnaround of a few weeks with only incremental improvements.

So where are you leading from?

Bob Janes

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Read these articles in full by clicking the links below:
 
The CEO and Talent Management

Leadership - Is there a universal leadership style?

Leadership Reflections

Authentic Leadership - "Know thyself"

The Difference Between Leadership & Management  

Leading from the Edge

The Crisis of Leadership