Page 267 - The extraordinary leader

244 • The Extraordinary Leader

development, and slowed down long-term maintenance of equipment.
For a relatively short time, the results look spectacular. Earnings soar—
temporarily. There is often enough time for this executive to exercise his
stock options, cash out, and be gone before all the damage he did has had
time to sink in.
It is also clear that effective results cannot be driven by personal agendas
and decisions that primarily feather the personal nest of the executive. The
results that count must be achieved with the welfare of the organization
in mind.
Some of the most useful development for any leader is to develop crystal
clarity regarding what is expected in the way of outputs. Those outputs need
to be categorized into “What does the organization expect from my depart-
ment?” A different question is “What does the organization expect from me
personally?” It is usually eye-opening for any leader to go about asking selected
peers, subordinates, and a boss for the answer to that question.

Set Extremely High Expectations

for Leaders
For research purposes, we arbitrarily set the 90th percentile as the cutoff point
for being “great” on some competency. We would much prefer to have
absolute, objective standards by which to make measurements, but lacking
those measures, we used percentiles as the surrogate measures.
We contend that by getting your best leaders to excel even more, everyone
benefits. Again, we recognize the temptation to focus on the lowest-performing
leaders and attempt to elevate their performance. That has a nice logic to it.
Instead, we urge helping the best of your current group of leaders to become
even better.
Peter Drucker points out that major advances in many fields come when
7
a few leading practitioners break new ground. A surgeon develops a new pro-
cedure by which to do less invasive heart surgery. Then, in a few years the
technique is being used by a wide group of surgeons. An investment banking
firm develops a new approach to financing start-up organizations. In time, a
number of other firms follow. One university registrar implements a totally
online process that enables students to sign up for classes, go through first-
year orientation, and place orders for books and supplies, all on the Internet.
Within a year, many other institutions will be doing the same thing.