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    Leadership Starts Here
    Leadership Starts Here
    Leadership Starts Here
    Ebook160 pages1 hour

    Leadership Starts Here

    By Steve Lishansky

    ()

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    About this ebook

    Understanding where leadership starts is key to achieving these valuable outcomes of high performing leaders. Leadership Starts Here provides common sense wisdom designed to provoke thinking and inspire effective action. At every level of leadership, the ability to provide compelling clarity creates the best p

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOptimize Leadership Publishing
    Release dateOct 20, 2021
    ISBN9781736704318
    Leadership Starts Here

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      Book preview

      Leadership Starts Here - Steve Lishansky

      LEADERSHIP

      STARTS

      HERE

      STEVE LISHANSKY

      Copyright © 2021 by Steve Lishansky

      All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without prior written consent of the author, except as provided by the United States of America copyright law.

      Published by Optimize Leadership Publishing.

      Printed in the United States of America.

      ISBN: 978-1-7367043-0-1 Hard Cover

      ISBN: 978-1-7367043-1-8 Digital

      Book design by Dave Vasudevan.

      This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. It is sold with the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering legal, accounting, or other professional services. If legal advice or other expert assistance is required, the services of a competent professional person should be sought.

      LEADERSHIP STARTS HERE

      "When you change the way you look at things,

      The things you look at change."

      Max Planck (Nobel Prize Physicist)

      INTRODUCTION

      Have you ever really considered the question: Where does leadership start?

      The importance, influence, and impact of leadership means this is a significant question.

      This book is dedicated to answering that question – and providing you with what it takes to enhance your leadership impact and results.

      I say that leadership start with your decisions. Everything starts with your decisions.

      Just as important – your decisions start with your decision-making process. The quality of your leadership decision-making process is the most fundamental starting point for massively impacting, accelerating, and elevating your team, business, and organization – and your life.

      This book is about the decision-making process that transforms how leaders generate clarity, focus, and impact on what is most important and valuable. This process – conducted well – ensures that everything that flows from these decisions provides the most effective foundation for sustainable growth, culture development, execution, and success.

      You are cordially invited on this journey to greater clarity, better focus, increased impact, and ultimately the maximum leverage for getting your organization to be the best it can be.

      (Note: everything here works for your life, family, community – every dimension of life – as well…)

      I wish you great growth, success, and fulfillment!

      Steve Lishansky

      Boston, MA

      May 2021

      TABLE OF CONTENTS

      Introduction

      SECTION 1 LEADERSHIP STARTS HERE

      CHAPTER 1 Leadership and Decision-Making

      The Starting Point

      CHAPTER 2 Why Decision-Making is So Challenging

      Warning Signs of a Poor Decision-Making Process

      CHAPTER 3 What the Best Leaders Have and Do

      The Power of Process for Performance Improvement

      CHAPTER 4 Success in Setting Up Your Decision-Making Process

      The Context for the Strategic Alignment ProcessTM

      The Decision-Making Process Principles and Structure

      Decision-Making and Engagement at Work

      Accelerating and Elevating Your Results

      SECTION 2 THE SECRETS OF THE STRATEGIC ALIGNMENT PROCESS TM

      CHAPTER 5 The Strategic Alignment Process – The Internal Elements

      Overview of the Internal Elements

      Identity

      Values

      Empowering Beliefs

      Rules

      CHAPTER 6 Strategic Alignment Process TM – The External Elements

      Overview of the External Elements

      Purpose

      Vision

      Mission

      Goals

      Strategies

      CHAPTER 7 Closing the Decision-Making Gaps

      When Elements Are Weak Or Missing

      CHAPTER 8 Facilitating Distillation of Best Thinking

      Why Poor Decision-Making is So Predominant

      CHAPTER 9 The Power of Strategic Alignment

      SECTION 3 WORKING THE STRATEGIC ALIGNMENT PROCESS TM

      CHAPTER 10 Executing the Strategic Alignment Process TM

      Preparing for the Session

      Strategic Alignment ProcessTM Session Steps

      Step 1 – Values:

      Step 2 – Identity

      The Power of Identity

      The Process of Generating Identity

      The Process of Choosing Purpose

      CHAPTER 11 The Power of Vision – When Done Well

      Examples of Visions and Missions

      Visions:

      Missions:

      CHAPTER 12 Processing Beliefs, Missions, Goals, and Strategies

      Choosing Empowering Beliefs

      Choosing the Mission

      Choosing Goals

      Choosing Strategies

      CHAPTER 13 Continuing the Momentum

      The Importance of Clarity of Outcome

      The Importance of Quality of Process

      Next Steps After the Meeting

      CHAPTER 14 Building Your Compelling Future

      Addendum – What Comes Next?

      Addnowledgements

      About the Author – Steve Lishansky

      SECTION 1

      LEADERSHIP STARTS HERE

      "The distance between the leader and the average is a constant.

      If leadership performance is high, the average will go up.

      It is easier to raise the performance of one leader than it is

      to raise the performance of a whole mass."

      Peter Drucker

      Imagine if you could raise the performance of a team of leaders…

      Steve Lishansky

      CHAPTER 1

      LEADERSHIP AND DECISION-MAKING

      "Simple, clear purpose and principles give rise to

      complex and intelligent behavior.

      Complex rules and regulations give rise

      to simple and stupid behaviors."

      Dee Hoch (Founder of VISA)

      At the most fundamental level, leadership requires clear and effective decisions – especially about what is most important and valuable to focus on and act on . It also requires the collective ownership of, commitment to, and alignment of your team and organization with these most critically important decisions.

      When we are looking at improving an organization’s performance and results, the first and fastest question to gauge how well its leadership decision-making process is working is: How strategically aligned is your leadership team?

      This is really asking whether what is most important and valuable is clear, agreed upon, collectively owned, fully pursued, and implemented.

      For a high functioning leader and organization, dealing with today’s continuously changing and challenging internal and external environments, is there a single question more important to answer – especially for knowing how your leadership team is working?

      Smart leaders know that the quality of your leadership team’s decision-making process, decisions, and the alignment around those decisions has everything to do with the quality of your organization’s performance and results.

      Learning how well aligned your leadership team’s decision-making process and decisions are can be uncovered in less than 30 minutes. A set of 3 simple questions, asked one-on-one of each of the organization’s senior leaders, reveals what needs to be known.

      How consistent and well aligned their answers are will immediately tell you the following critically important information:

      ✧What they really think is most important and valuable to focus on

      ✧What the focus of their attention, time, and resources really is

      ✧Where the divergences among your leaders are

      ✧How effective your leadership decision-making process is

      ✧How much agreement and alignment your top people have around the key drivers of results and success

      ✧How much collaboration and commitment to mutual success really exists

      ✧Ultimately, what decisions are driving the organization

      This simple yet highly effective 3-question process that any organization can use typically produces results that are anywhere from sobering to scary. Try it yourself with your top people and see if your results are consistent with what has been found with organizations around the world.

      Here are the questions to be asked of each person, individually, one-on-one:

      ✧What is our organization’s 3-year Vision?

      ✧What is our organization’s Mission?

      ✧What are our organization’s top 3 strategic Objectives this year?

      THE STARTING POINT

      These are such simple questions – yet the quality and alignment of the answers that your people provide are critical to the success of your organization. One big challenge leaders face is that these specific questions and their answers are often missed, ignored, or not even considered as you attempt to move forward with your current strategies. However, missing strong, high quality answers means you miss the starting point for creating the best and most successful outcomes – and achieving them in the most effective and efficient way.

      Missing agreement and alignment on the answers to these questions indicates that your underlying decision-making process is weak or flawed. It also means you have found a key culprit for many of the problems and under-achievement of your organization.

      Your decision-making process – and the effectiveness of the decisions that flow from it – are the starting points and foundation for the clarity and focus that produces the greatest impact and results. The best and most effective decisions create extreme clarity about what really matters – and why they matter as critical priorities. That in turn enables a quality of focus by your people that produces better choices and results, and does it faster.

      That is the structure and process of decision-making that I call the Strategic Alignment ProcessTM. It produces clarity about what is most important, why those choices are the best ones, and how to produce results that really matter.

      Yet, amazingly enough and sorry to say, a high-quality decision-making process is usually missing – especially on teams, in groups, and in organizations. The ultimate power of a team or organization should

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