‘The House of Excellence’

A simple model for leadership

While reading “Turn The Ship Around” by L. David Marquet, I eventually pictured in my mind a way to see it as a kind of simple model, or metaphor, for leadership.

Now that I have recently started up a new job with a new team, I’ve decided to take a stab at formalizing it with a bit of story-telling around it…

Let’s see how does that come across to others - really interested in some feedback as this can be seen as a first iteration. “Thinking it out loud” if you like.

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At the most essential, context-free and universally applicable level, I would frame the challenge that any team or work group should be up to as…

… dare and strive for EXCELLENCE!...

The question then becomes how you practically do that - what can help to get there…

We can start small and avoid making (silly) mistakes – that would be nice… Yet unrealistic. We all are humans and will eventually fail.

Here’s an idea – what about we learn from those failures and do not make them again!? Isn’t that even nicer!?

We can make new mistakes – that is fine! But not repeat those we already we know better…

If that all holds true, and I will dare to say it does, I guess we could dare to say that…

… If we have to do ONE thing only, let that be: WE LEARN…

That’s the foundation… Or to get more visual…

But we need a more tangible and inspirational goal! As learning alone will not cut it! Way too abstract – it’s not an end by and in itself, rather a means to something else.

Ultimately, we want everyone to be able to operate in a highly autonomous level, exercising their freedom(which is conceptually better than autonomy, but that is rather an etymological discussion I will spare you from right now) to make decisions closest to where the action is, as much as humanly possible – because that is more efficient (or agile, if you like…) as well as more sustainable.

We can define that as a notion of distributed control… (you have something that needs to be managed and you want to do it a federated manner)

So, we now have a foundation and something we want to sustain (which we can picture it in our minds as a sort of roof…).

Just putting both on top of each other, still comes across as too abstract, doesn’t it?! WE LEARN alone won’t sustain the distributed control that much.

Here’s a suggestion (or an idea)…

Bear with me for a moment that we will get to a bit more of detail on what could be part of those pillars, more practically speaking…

Because I want you now to picture this, the full picture of what we could call “The House of Excellence”….

And we can now and finally wrap it up by providing some more granularity on how to go about the pillars as well, as they are the mechanisms by which we achieve what we want to achieve, in daring and striving for EXCELLENCE…

With WE LEARN being the thing that is always there (a.k.a., ‘ubiquitous’), functioning as a feedback loop – meaning that in every opportunity, interaction or moment, if we have to do ONE thing only, then WE LEARN…So that we…

·      reduce uncertainty…

·      improve understanding…

·      expand knowledge…

·      level up our “capacity of production”…

·      Etc., etc., etc… (I think you get the spirit…)

And just like in a “house”, or any construction for that matter, whenever we need to carry or sustain a bigger load, in our case of distributed control, there is a simple way we can make sure that will work and not collapse…By making the pillars more robust or ‘thicker’…

by Rodrigo Sperb, feel free to connect (I only refuse invites from people clearly with an agenda to ‘coldly’ sell something to me), happy to engage and interact