Provision #669: Implementation
Matters
by Bob Tschannen-Moran
Laser Provision
As we have seen in recent weeks, great leaders inspire people with the power
of vision and the prospect of possibilities. Great leaders also have a knack for
generating great ideas. But inspiration and ideas are not enough to get the job
done. Implementation matters and that takes both experimentation and
organization. It takes experimentation to know which ideas work. It takes
organization to put the best ones into practice. Sound attractive? Read on.
LifeTrek Provision
I have
been writing about evocative leadership for two months now, and we have a ways
to go. Why am I concerned with "evocative" leadership? Consider the root
meanings of the two words:
Evocative: Calling to mind, bringing into existence, eliciting emotions,
causing to appear, summoning into action, finding ones voice (from Latin
ēvocāre, to call, akin to vōx, voice)
Leadership: To go before or with to show the way, to conduct by holding
and guiding, to take the directing or principal part, to influence or induce, to
guide in direction, course, action, opinion, to serve to bring to a place (from
Old English lǽdan, causative of līthan, to go, travel).
When you put those two words together, you end up with the following sense when
it comes to leadership: Inspiring people to move forward together in a desired
direction. The combination of "evocative" with "leadership" suggests a certain
mechanism of action. Instead of bossing people around and telling them what to
do, evocative leaders assist people to find their voice and to happily engage in
the work at hand.
If you are a leader and your people are not contributing and happy, then you are
not an evocative leader. If you work for a leader and you are not contributing
and happy, then you are not working for an evocative leader. This is not to say
that all credit and blame fall at the feet of any one leader, especially since
we are all leaders from whatever position we hold. But it is to say that leaders
hold a special responsibility for organizing people to get things done.
And the best way to do that is through the empowerment principle. The more we
let go of our positional power as leaders the more power we generate in our
people and organizations. The relationship is necessarily reciprocal. The more
power we claim for and hold on to ourselves, the less power others will feel and
exercise in our presence.
Yet many people think and act as if leaders are the ones with power, while
followers are the ones without power. No wonder leaders are so often stressed
out, overwhelmed, and ineffective. When we take on too much power,
responsibility, and control for ourselves, we discourage others from sharing the
load and engaging their creativity. The task of leadership then becomes
unbearable.
How tragic! If leadership is about anything, it is about getting things done
through people. Yes, leaders inspire. Yes, leaders come up with great ideas. But
unless leaders are able to channel that inspiration and implement those ideas,
then we really aren't leaders at all. Implementation matters, and that's why
great leaders are evocative leaders. Unless we evoke the full engagement of our
people and organizations in meeting challenges and achieving goals, there's no
way to get the job done.
Great leaders understand this on deep and profound levels. There's no way for
any one person to know everything there is to know about the work at hand or
even the strategy to follow. It takes an all-hands-on-deck mentality when it
comes to organizational effectiveness. That's especially true in this day and
age. The increasing complexity and pace of change are legendary, with no end in
sight. Unless everyone rallies to the cause, there's no way to keep up.
It takes more than just willingness, enthusiasm, and job satisfaction, however,
to get things done. It also takes organization. What is the workflow? Who does
what when? How do inputs get tracked through the system without getting lost?
These and many other such questions may seem quite basic, as though we were
describing an entry-level course in organizational management, but failing to
take care of these things have been the undoing of many a leader. When people
are not clear on methodology and procedures, when systems are not designed to
support organizational effectiveness, when ideas are never field tested and
codified, then implementation suffers.
That's why leaders encourage people not just to come up with new ideas but to
prototype them to see what works. It's like conducting a science experiment to
test your hypothesis. That's the best way to advance one's knowledge in the
field. And it's the best way to move from ideas to implementation. Instead of
moving directly from brainstorming to implementation, field testing represents
an intermediate yet essential step.
Case in point: During the past week I have been in Albuquerque, New Mexico
attending a coaching conference known as a
Conversation Among Masters.
During this time, several of us from the Board of Governors of the International
Association of Coaching have been field testing a new slogan for our
organization: Expanding the Path to Coaching Mastery.
Fortunately, the reactions have been great. But we would have learned just as
much if the reactions had been discouraging. We could have talked forever about
the slogan, but without actually running it by other people without actually
field testing the idea with our target market we would never know for sure.
Now that we know, we can more readily and confidently move on to the next step
of incorporating that slogan into our organizational life and work.
Brainstorm prototype implement. That is the process evocative leaders
follow for getting things done through people. We empower people to experiment
with ideas, to adopt the best ones, and to organize their work accordingly.
Evocative leaders are facilitators of both innovation and organization through
empowering the people we serve.
Coaching Inquiries: How does work get done in your organization? What power
do people have to come up with new ideas and to try them out? Once a new idea is
field tested, how well does the work get organized? What clarity would be
helpful when it comes to roles and workflow? What systems would make the work
easier? How can you bring that spirit into your leadership and organization
today?
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LifeTrek Readers' Forum (selected feedback
from the past week)
Editor's Note: The LifeTrek Readers' Forum contains selections from the comments
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Email Bob.
Thanks for today's Provision.
Ideas Matter.
I turned to you for inspiration because I had to miss church, and am I glad I
did! You've given me lots of good ideas on how to conduct an upcoming retreat
for my senior staff. After reading this Provision, I think I'll use some AI
techniques to get their ideas flowing. Do you have other past Provisions that
might address AI methods for conducting such gatherings? (Ed. Note: See my
series on
Appreciative Inquiry from 2005.)
I very much enjoy
reading Provisions every Sunday morning, and am learning a lot. Thank you for
that. Top
May you be filled with goodness, peace, and joy.
Bob Tschannen-Moran
President, LifeTrek Coaching International,
www.LifeTrekCoaching.com
CEO & Co-Founder, Center for School Transformation,
www.SchoolTransformation.com
Immediate Past President, International Association of Coaching,
www.CertifiedCoach.org
Author, Evocative Coaching: Transforming Schools One Conversation at a Time,
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