The below braindump was originally intended for my colleagues. It became too big for a Slack message, so I just added it here.
A few years ago I was elected to lead a self-organized club within a corporation. It was part of an international organization that trained people in leadership and speaking. I had no experience with the club and I hardly knew the people. I had one year to prove myself.
Talk about a challenge.
On my first management meeting, I found out that they had about 15 members and 9 of them were part of the management committee. (Top-heavy organization.) The 9 people talked for an hour, spewing ideas after ideas on what the organization should do for the next year.
I did the only sensible thing in that situation: I listened. I took some notes and tried to get to know the people better.
A week later, on the next management meeting, I already knew the biggest problem we faced: out of all the ideas that were raised, literally nothing was started, nothing moved forward in any way. We lacked a direction and we had no momentum. We did have enthusiasm, though, which was promising.
I did the only sensible thing in that situation: I started reading. The international group had a few manuals on how to manage a club and what makes for a good club (the life signs of a company). Eventually I came up with a minimalistic plan (MVP) on what needs to be done in that year. I presented that to my team and asked them for their commitment. Note, that this didn’t contain any of their ideas, but they understood that this was the bare minimum we had to get done and all other ideas are still on the table.
Much like when you make a Christmas tree, you need an actual tree first. If the tree is missing, you can’t put any decoration on it.
With that commitment, I was able to set their focus on the right track and we started gaining momentum. The numbers started climbing and soon enough we had a working (alive) club. The management committee went through a natural shift too. The people who committed were thriving, the ones who just had a big mouth eventually started disappearing. They didn’t feel good in an environment where results had more value than big ideas without any execution. (You can’t fire someone from a voluntary club.)
So what happened to all the ideas? Slowly, during the execution they were picked up and implemented. The team now understood that they can’t implement everything all at once, because it will derail focus (and no one has time for that). They also understood that ideas weren’t ditched. They understood that they have to own their ideas and commit to them, if they want them implemented. If we don’t have time for them, there’s always next year.
Most importantly the club doubled in size and the executive directors of the company started showing up for club meetings. They started considering the club as the first stepping stone for any new leaders they want to train. Most of my committee went on to become vice presidents in the company or they started traveling with the company to other offices. (It was a good perk to have back then.)
What did I learn from this?
- I learned that leadership and management can be learned.
I had to accept that I don’t know it all (or any of it), and I had to seek out the necessary knowledge.
Being a visionary might require more skills, but translating it to leadership is definitely learnable. - I learned that having a plan is important.
It gives you an excuse to do the right thing and it gives reason to your team so they can commit.
It helps accountability and it gives momentum.
I learned more things about planning (like there’s no shame in changing your plans) and communications (which is even more important) but that’s for another entry.
