No one ever criticized Isaac Stern, one of the greatest violinists of the 20th Century, because he couldn’t play the saxophone very well; nor was Charlie “Bird” Parker discounted because he was not good on the violin. Starve your weaknesses and feed your strengths. Managers (people) do not excel because they overcome their weaknesses. They excel because they identify two or three things they do well, develop them, and do them all the time.

The Pareto Principle, taught by Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto reminds managers that 20 percent of the things on our “to-do list” will get 80 percent of our results. What discriminates that 20 percent is not that they are useful in some objective sense. Those high return activities usually have a felt connection to the personhood of the manager — not just to what is most pressing when he or she hits the front door on Monday morning. It is woven into the relationship between efforts and outcome that activities that resonate with who we deeply are will have the biggest payoff.   

In his classic, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey asks us to discriminate the urgent and the important. Some things feel urgent, but are not very important in the long (or even the middle) run. Some things that are important do not feel urgent and fade to the margin of a manager’s attention: self development, development of those people the manager leads, quiet reflection, planning, coaching, rest. When what is important is neglected, everything has a way of becoming urgent. Working life becomes unmanageable. It is like a snowball rolling downhill — bigger, faster, heavier.    

Events, or you, will decide what to do next, what to do today. The things that great managers do spring from their personal core. It is hard to say what is in that core, but it reeks of  authenticity (thinking, feeling and acting all going in the same direction most of the time), clarity, purpose, energy, passion. Great managers have a clear line of sight between these things and what they do. It is a great treasure.

Out of ancient Russia comes a story of a monk who is walking down a snow covered road in one of those awful Russian Winters. As he makes a turn in the road, a soldier steps out of the forest, points a rifle and demands answers:

• “Who are you?”
• “Where are you going?”
• “Why do you want to go there?”

The monk thinks for a moment, then responds, “How much does the army pay you?”
The soldier is taken aback. He is not accustomed to people asking him questions when he is the one holding the rifle. But, collecting his wits, he replies, “Two hundred a month.”

The monk takes the soldier to a new place in which he begins to think about his life in much the same way that the monk does,

• “I will pay you three hundred a month if you will meet me on this same
• road, at this same time, every day, and ask me those same three
• questions.”

What will the soldier hear? Will he think, “It’s only a job offer.”  Yes, and the grand canyon is only a hole in the ground in Arizona! Or will he begin to feel the abyss that has opened up between his culture and that of the monk?  

The monk has opened a chasm of Grand Canyon proportions between the culture of the soldier and another culture. If the soldier is capable of taking this encounter as more than a job offer, he comes to feel a tension for which there is no name. Something doesn’t fit here. The monk has immersed the soldier in cognitive dissonance between his front-line military culture and the culture of the philosopher — the therapist; the manager.  

The influence of leaders springs from who they authentically Are. It is leveraged by clarity about where they are Going. It is empowered by the “Why” — personalized passion.    
Great managers have learned that personal clarity about those three questions is the foundation for everything they do. Everything wants to be mediocre. It is by authentic clarity, energy and acts of will that organizations can be leveraged up to great performance.  

The principle of the lever that Archimedes explained two centuries before Christ is worthy of a manager’s attention. The principle is this — given a place to stand, a lever and a fulcrum to rest the lever on, it is possible to move objects that would otherwise be too heavy to move. Archimedes said, “Give me a place to stand, and a lever, and I will move the earth.” With a lever, effort becomes effective. Expectations are exceeded.     

Great managers cultivate their skill in the use of levers

• Influence. People will follow authenticity because they want more of it in their own lives.
• Self management. Management of their core beliefs, priorities and anxieties.
• Leadership. Calling people to meaning, and creating an infectious motivational environment that is worthy of people’s best effort. Where people will work hard because they want to.
• Accountability. They establish relationships and systems in which people hold themselves accountable. Accountability is self-imposed in relationships of trust or it never becomes real. Without it, obedience is all that a manager can expect. Obedience must be re-imposed every time — it never gets internalized.  
• Alignment. Work activities not in alignment with the values and priorities of human service professionals become soul-draining drudgery. Values and priorities disconnected from activities of day to day work become platitudes that breed cynicism. Great managers insure against these dangers. They show the connections — all the time.
• Change Leadership. Great managers raise the urgency for change and constantly demonstrate the connection between the necessary changes and the preferred and possible future for the organization.

Skill in the use of these levers is not grounded in personality or charisma. Nor does it rest on “common sense.” But career-long learning is available for every manager. It may be as close as a candid conversation with a fellow manager (even one in another organization or field) about the soldier’s questions and the monk’s offer.

Are you ready? You can be.

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