Running head: BEST LEADERSHIP PRACTICES FOR REPEATABLE SUCCESS 1

Best Leadership Practices For Repeatable Success by Blending Customer, Business and

Technical Perspectives.

Shubha Radha Krishna

International Technological University, San Jose, CA

Author Note

Shubha Radha Krishna, email: krishnashubh582@students.itu.edu

BEST LEADERSHIP PRACTICES FOR REPEATABLE SUCCESS 2

Thesis

Success of an organization can be easily attributed to rock star performers, luck or powerful

influencers backing the company. But these resources or factors are not ubiquitous. In this paper,

the focus is on showcasing a framework or a set of disciplines that leaders can follow to reproduce

success. The intention is to provide a reusable methodology to create recurring success. The

discussion in this paper is based on practices followed by a Microsofts Program Manager; but

with a few modifications these can be applied to most levels of leadership hierarchy.

Keywords: Leadership, Best Practices, Success

BEST LEADERSHIP PRACTICES FOR REPEATABLE SUCCESS 3

Best Leadership Practices For Repeatable Success by Blending Customer, Business and

Technical Perspectives.

Traditional schools of thought analyze different leadership practices and try to generalize

the traits of every case study. These generalizations become lessons which will be studied by

practitioners. The ideas provided are usually very abstract. For instance, Kousez and Pozner

identify the five leadership practices:

1. Model the Way.

2. Inspire a Shared Vision.

3. Challenge the Process.

4. Enable Others to Act.

5. Encourage the Heart.

Teachings of the above literature is easier to read than implement. As a practical solution,

Leadership practices of a Program Manager is analyzed and conclusions are drawn as to how these

practices can be applied in everyday work life.

Five Leadership Practices

Creating a model involves setting up examples and guidelines on how milestones can be

achieved. It defines what can be attributed as success and breaks up the end goal into smaller goals.

This helps achieve smaller wins and paves the way for the larger objective. This approach brings

in clarity; because the entire game plan can be overwhelming and fuzzy most of the times. The

most important task of a leader is to envision the goal. This vision should inspire the people who

follow it and bring a sense of commitment and passion towards the goal. Disrupting the status quo

is an another exciting task the leader should execute. This leads to out of the box thinking and

achieving goals faster in an enjoyable fashion most of the times. Enabling others to act is what
BEST LEADERSHIP PRACTICES FOR REPEATABLE SUCCESS 4

fuels the continual progress of an organization. People often respect flexibility and meaning in

their duties. Giving people a sense of responsibility and a freedom to execute it, ignites a spark of

passion and creativity. This collection of thoughts can develop an attractive environment in the

organization; which should be one of the main purposes of the organization. At the same time

leaders must be cautious to align themselves with the business goals. Encouraging the heart

involves rewarding talent and appreciating hard work in various forms. Leaders must recognize

different contributions at various levels and show a sense of gratitude. Appreciation at the right

time and with right value instills a sense of ownership and will reap greater rewards to the

organization in the long run.

Proven Practices for Productive Leadership

I tried to analyze Michael Hyatts experiences at Microsoft as a Program Manager. His

experiences involve a blend of customer, business and technical perspective. His job included right

from creating a team of smart people to taking a product from cradle to grave. The whole process

can be broken down into project plans, resource plans, risk plans, project schedules, managing

budgets, dealing with changes, reporting status and managing stake holders expectations.

1. What problems that are to be thought about?

It might sound a very obvious thing to think about, but most often people lose sight

about what they are trying to solve and tend to focus on the wrong things. The problem

must be kept at the front and center to exponentially increase the effectiveness. If there

is a lack of clarity in the problem being solved, then a lot of resources are wasted.

2. A cadence must be developed for smart people

Deciding on a cadence helps execution of plans to a large extant. We can use a

pattern such as Monday Vision, Daily Outcomes, Friday Reflection. On Mondays the
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team can identify three wins for the week. Each day identify three wins for the day. On

Fridays, the team should reflect on the results by asking What three things are going

well? and What three things must improve?. This creates an efficient and effective

learning loop.

3. Must have boundaries and buffers

It is important to set realistic and important goals that can be achieved in a given

time frame. Throwing hours at a task is not a sustainable way of achieving goals. When

we have a constraint over the number of hours, it implies that we have to prioritize the

tasks that will be done for that week. This keeps the entire team happy and motivated

in the long term.

4. Whys must lead the way

It always helps asking Why do you do what you do?. The answers can vary. It

can be to learn a new skill, add a new tool etc. But it helps us gauge why we are doing

a particular task and align with it.

5. Focus on strengths

It is a common knowledge that people are the best at those things which they love

to do. So it becomes important for a leader to identify what the team members enjoy

and assign tasks accordingly. If a team member is assigned a task he/she doesnt enjoy

it will be the kiss of death.

6. Be result oriented

Being clear about the outcome makes us identify shortcuts and efficient ways to

achieve things. Spending time on activities doesnt necessarily guarantee results.

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7. Have different themes for different times

Identifying a theme for every month aligns thinking of the team into various

improvements that can be done. Let us say we can focus on simplicity for a month.

That month the goal must be completely about simplifying things for that month. So

the team must be encouraged to focus on things that will help them simplify things in

their everyday activity.

8. Be inquisitive

In the new era of technology, the mindset of command-and-control no longer works.

In the knowledge era the key to success is to ask better questions. Whos the customer?

Whats the problem? Whats the competition doing? What does success look like?

These type of questions help to focus on the goal and the modus operandi.

9. Teamwork

It is an uphill and a very daunting task if you try to do it alone as a leader. It is very

important to get the team involved in the vision. The vision must be discussed with the

team, feedback and improvements must be welcomed. This creates a sense of

ownership among the team and the uphill task becomes very easy with many hands to

help.

10. Be practical and realistic

It is very easy to get stuck with the ideal goal in mind and be depressed when it

becomes a tedious goal. It is in the best interest of everyone to focus on simple and

achievable goals. Once a small set of goals are achieved it is open for feedback and

thus another iteration of changes helps to improve the product. Incremental way of

doing things help you achieve a robust product and everyone is happy.
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Personal Experience

I had the opportunity to work at a firm of Chartered Accountants. The first couple of years

I saw the firm being very dysfunctional. Employees had low morale. They lacked proper guidance,

they didnt have a sense of ownership and the firm had started building a bad reputation for missed

goals. The founder was under a lot of stress and had resorted to micro-managing many tasks and

it was highly inefficient and created a bad work environment. We hired a consultant to help us

understand and improve our firm. Many of the suggestions provided by the consultants closely

reflected the practices suggested in this paper. We had weekly meetings setup to discuss purely

non-technical aspects of our jobs. We were involved in decision making by helping us choose the

kind of clients we wanted to work with. This created a sense of involvement and helped us focus

on our strengths. Naturally people were more efficient and there was no longer a need for micro

management as all the goals were met. The clients ended up being happy because they were

allocated the right resources.

Conclusion

The best practices listed by Kouzes and Posner gave me an abstract understanding of what

practices go into being a good leader. These opened up a new paradigm in my thinking. The proven

practices discussed above gave me a robust framework that can be applied to work of any nature.

For instance, asking the right questions help me align my tasks and force me to identify the purpose

of any task. The framework has several facets such as getting the team involved in the vision, focus

on simple goals etc. which can be reused in any situation right from planning any family trip to a

startup venture. I will be actively applying this framework in my every day activities as well.
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References

Kouzes & Posner, (2006). A Leader's Legacy, San Francisco: Wiley.

Hyatt, M. (2012). 10 Proven Practices for more productive leadership.Website:

http://michaelhyatt.com/10-proven-practices-for-more-productive-leadership.html.

Giber D, Lam M. S., Goldsmith M, Bourke Justin & Posner, (2009). Linkage Incs Best Practices

in Leadership Development Handbook, San Francisco: Wiley.

Bersin J. Leadership Development: The Six Best Practices. Website:

http://joshbersin.com/2008/01/leadership-development-the-six-best-practices