Musings at Altitude

In the past 10 years, I’ve been fortunate enough to be part of two very different environments – one of incredible and unprecedented growth and a second of extreme austerity in market spending and thus intense competition for every single revenue dollar.  In the first, the most important aspect of our company was not great leadership but great engagement managers that responded quickly and aggressively to the needs of our clients.  In the second, the most important thing for our company was great leadership as very treacherous waters were navigated and very despondent team members needed motivating. 

After experiencing first hand the addictive environment of unprecendented growth, I started saying “even bad leaders can succeed in a totally up market”.  I saw that too close and personal – success can cover so many sins and shortcomings in leadership.  But I also experienced the intensity of a down market, where poor leadership was more visible than ever and could not be masked through any successes in the company.  I then said, “we’ll find out how good our leaders really are now that we face significant challenges.”  And that proved all to true. 

Earlier this decade, I was fortunate enough to lead a company in a period of fanatical growth.  We made lots of mistakes, but we quickly overcame those mistakes and still drove incredible revenue and income growth.  Because I was in the leadership position, I got lots of credit for my leadership skills, but in all honesty, the extent of my leadership was empowering others to “just go grow”, and they did a magnificent job of just that.  I remember vividly the phone constantly ringing as folks called and said “can you” and we quickly responded with “you bet”.  We threw people and structure at opportunities, and we pushed off any investments in corporate infrastructure instead to focus solely on client execution.  We were truly addicted to growth, and more importantly, we may very well have been blinded by that same growth.

Today, however, that spending frenzy that drove such remarkable growth has been replaced by an economic downturn that has turned prosperity to austerity and replaced the smiles of confidence with very stern looks of concern.  Those same leaders that responded to every challenge and every question with “we’ll figure it out” are now faced with the very real possibility of program cancellations and rapidly declining spending from their trusted and historically reliable clients.  Many of those who have emerged in leadership positions during this period of insane growth are now faced with the daunting task of delivering much needed revenue and income when the path to such revenue success is masked behind a very dense fog on the competitive business landscape.  Most certainly, now that we need great leaders more than ever, we’ll be quickly learning how good those leaders really are.

As someone who watches other leaders closely, I’m anxious to find out who emerges during these incredibly tough times as the leaders we can count on to deliver against expectations even in a down market.  I’m also anxious to see how our team members respond to the changing intensity and focus that is coming from each of our leaders as we all now react to the rapidly changing market place.

As I think about the expectations we have of our leaders in these tough economic times, I’m reminded of a quote from one of my favorite movies, “The American President”.  Near the end of that movie, President Andrew Shepherd breaks into a daily press conference and gives one of the most motivational speeches I’ve heard in a movie – here’s a pointer to that speech – http://www.americanrhetoric.com/MovieSpeeches/moviespeechtheamericanpresident.html.

The last few lines are priceless.  “We’ve got serious problems and we need serious people.  And if you want to talk about character Bob, you’d better come at me with more than a burning flag and a membership card.  If you want to talk about character and American values, fine.  Just tell me where and when, and I’ll show up.  This is a time for serious people, Bob, and your fifteen minutes are up.  My name is Andrew Shepherd and I AM the President.” 

I’m thinking that we’re going to need several of our leaders making an equally riveting speech in the coming months!