There is actually a silver bullet for increasing your organization’s effectiveness: hire well. More specifically hire good leaders that will step up and raise your organization’s performance bar and set a new standard. Peter Drucker summarized this straight-forward recipe in his book The Effective Executive (Drucker Series).

…[Effective executive] knows, moreover, that the standard of any human group is set by the performance of the leaders. And he, therefore, never allows leadership performance to be based on anything but true strength.
…In human affairs, the distance between leaders and the average is a constant. If leadership performance is high, the average will go up. The effective executive knows that it is easier to raise the performance of one leader than it is to raise the performance of a whole mass. He therefore makes sure that he puts into the leadership position, into the standard-setting, the performance-making position, the man who has the strength to do the outstanding, the pace-setting job.

Exceptional leaders can deliver the impossible while building the organization, creating excitement about the future, enhancing communication and team morale while strengthening customer and partner loyalty. No wonder “bet on the jockey, not on the horse” is a mantra that drives VC investment decisions.

There are many studies on what constitutes an effective and exceptional leader. These individuals share some common characteristics:

• They challenge the established processes, search for new opportunities and experiment with new ideas. However, they do this in a participatory fashion where they are inclusive of others. They listen well, consistently request feedback, encourage and share and in return they are persuasive, persistent and as they tend to be politically savvy, they use discretion.
• They are focused on key priorities, keep it simple, celebrate small wins and are clear about their values. This enables them to build a compelling vision for the future, create a nurturing environment and provide motivation to rally a team behind this shared vision where everyone understands how they fit into the big picture.
• They understand the importance of accountability and ownership, for themselves and for the teams they manage. They enable others to act by involving them in decisions, and continuously look for ways to coach and mentor their team for individual growth. They build on other’s strengths and use it to motivate them.
• They focus on results and prefer to ask for forgiveness over permission. They share the rewards and recognition while taking responsibility for setbacks.
• They have a presence that brings credibility to what they do and say. They build confidence as they are thorough, professional and insightful.

If you are in a people management position and struggling with raising your team’s performance bar to the next level, consider the following:

• Do a self-analysis of your own management style, observe yourself in action and request feedback from others. Are you emphasizing accountability and ownership, or micro-managing everything short of chewing the food for them? Are you building on the strengths of your team, or just bluntly pointing out their weaknesses expecting them to overcome it overnight?
• Analyze your organizational circumstances. You can certainly build a dynamic and high-performance team, but your organization might have put the choke collar on you. Powerlessness over external resources, lack of cooperation, issues of trust and openness are certainly frustrating experiences. Some could be solved by organizational restructuring, for others you will need to sharpen your political savvyness.
• Evaluate the cultural aspects of your organization. Is it participative and inclusive, or more command and control? There is a time and place for different styles, such as in case of emergencies where command and control can be most effective. However, in general this style destroys motivation, creativity and lends itself to just tell me what to do attitudes.
• Study information and knowledge sharing patterns of your organization. Ideas and innovations are built on other ideas, and transparency/openness creates an environment conducive to sharing, understanding and motivating.
• Be honest, are there egos at play? Effective leaders learn to supress their egos in favor of the team.
• Take a survey; is the problem with lack of focus and having unrealistic optimism? Too much task switching reduces productivity, expectations that are obviously impossible to meet kill any potential for motivation.

At the end of the day, you need to model the way. Demonstrate your new performance standards by setting the pace, by having challenging, exciting yet achievable goals, by motivating and coaching others to contribute their best to the team. And, don’t forget to celebrate small victories along the way.

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