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Wrapping Up Another YearDecember is a month of contradictions: with the holidays now in full swing, many of us are simultaneously trying to wrap up the business year into a
nice, neat package. We leave our offices piled high with seemingly important work still to be done, in order to paw through piles of largely useless merchandise that might make someone a nice holiday gift. We take a few moments on the way home to reflect on all the things we have to be grateful for – family, friends, health, happiness. Then we slip back into the more familiar reverie about how to get everything done that has to be
done in time for the Christmas holiday, year-end reports, financial targets and tax deadlines, holiday office closings. This year, the global context for all the usual year-end activity is massive uncertainty. By now, we should be used to that, but nonetheless it’s still unsettling. Operating in a world of hard deadlines, lengthy to-do lists, and overcrowded calendars, it’s sometimes difficult to appreciate the
contradiction that all this frenetic activity is taking place in an environment where you can never be sure that your actions will bring you your intended results. The world is simply too complex, with too many unknowns, to draw a clear line from cause to effect, no matter how small your organization. So maybe it’s not surprising that there’s a current debate in the business world that centers around the popular image of the all-powerful, all-knowing
CEO. After the spectacular flameouts of so many corporate titans in the past year, it’s actually refreshing to read articles like the one in a recent issue of Harvard Business Review which presents research findings showing no conclusive evidence that charismatic leadership affects an organization’s performance. Indeed, the author argues, quite often these larger-than-life leaders actually destabilize the organization and make its problems even worse.
But wait; running counter to this line of argument are the results of a recent online poll conducted by the Center for Creative Leadership (CCL). More than 70 percent of respondents said that regardless of whether a CEO is highly visible to the organization or not, he or she has tremendous impact on the overall success or failure of the organization. Rightly or wrongly, many people still look to individual leaders at the top to set direction, build
commitment, create alignment, and perform related leadership tasks. Expectations persist. This seeming contradiction may be illuminated by focusing more closely on the distinction between the highly visible – charismatic – leader and the “quiet leader”, as Joseph L. Badaracco, Jr. calls them in his new book Leading Quietly. They are the leaders who maintain a low profile, yet are
responsible for truly impressive achievements through the exercise of patience, restraint, and modesty. Quiet leaders, writes Badaracco, are realists; they see the world as it is – a kaleidoscope rather than a fixed target or well-mapped terrain. They know that the world is uncertain and ambiguous, that anything can happen, and they are prepared to seize opportunities as they arise. They are practitioners of practical wisdom, not public heroics.
December, with all its contradictions, is a good time to step back from the fray and reflect on your own approach to leadership over the past year. “COB 2002” will come and go, whether or not you tie up all the loose ends. Like so many of the deadlines that drive our lives, it’s largely artificial anyway. With the full benefit of hindsight, can you honestly say you hit your intended targets, or were they really targets of opportunity? Do you
really know what worked, and what didn’t? Ask yourself how much of your attention and effort you directed to tasks or projects that somehow became irrelevant during the course of the year’s events. How well did you tolerate the messiness of uncertainty, and maintain a focus on doing the right things, regardless of whether or not they put you in the spotlight? Were you more focused on positioning yourself
as a highly visible leader than on positioning yourself and your organization to respond to the unexpected? 
An economics professor in the United Kingdom has recently proposed a mathematical formula that expresses time in monetary units. According to this formula, the average British minute is now worth about 15 cents.
In a recent online poll conducted by the Center for Creative Leadership and Chief Executive magazine, an overwhelming 84 percent of CEOs responding cited “people management skills” as the main driver of a leader’s success at all levels of management. Compensation preferences of executives polled by Net Future Institute have changed dramatically in the past two years. Fifty-three percent say they would now prefer an increase in salary, with only 9 percent desiring more
equity. Asked what they would have preferred just two years ago, 42 percent went for the salary increase, and 29 percent said they would have wanted more equity. 
Strategician Coined by sailboat racers who wanted a name for the crew member who
often performs the two distinct and usually separate functions of strategist and tactician in a race. Given the breakneck pace of change, the streamlining of business processes, and the blurring of roles and responsibilities even at the executive level, wouldn’t this be a good term to describe what you actually do? 
Darwin Magazine, online. What I like about it: It’s a magazine about IT management for the rest of us; written in real English, it’s topical, insightful, even hip. A sister publication to CIO magazine, Darwin’s stated goal is “to provide you with good, deep, reliable information on what it takes to participate effectively in the IT process.”
Beth Bloomfield
Executive Coach, Strategy Consultant
Principal, Bloomfield Associates Systems 1: An Introduction to Systems Thinking, by Draper Kauffman.
What I like about it: Very early systems management thinking. It's very brief and can be read in as little as an afternoon. It's written very much from a non-technical layman's perspective so the concepts are very easy to grasp. It gives you a whole new perspective on life and the world around you, and gets you to train your mind to think about the big picture.
Scott Holliday
Director, NASA HQ ISO 9001 Project Office and Team Leader, HQ ISO 9001 Implementation Team
Share what you’re into — books, articles, movies, music, websites — with others on the list! Send us the title and author or other pertinent information, along with one sentence on what you like about it, and if we use it in A Different Optic we’ll not only quote you, we’ll provide a link to your website. 
"If you have always done it that way, it is probably wrong"
— Charles Kettering
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Beth Bloomfield was awarded the CMC (Certified
Management Consultant) designation in November 2002. The CMC is awarded to those select consultants who have demonstrated a history of effective results for clients, adherence to the Code of Ethics of the Institute of Management Consultants (IMC USA), and knowledge of a range of consulting and professional practice management skills. IMC USA is a non-profit organization that supports professionalism and ethics among practicing management consultants. Fewer than 1,000
consultants in the United States have been recognized with the CMC. That is less than 1% of all active consultants in all fields. Consultants who earn the CMC stand out from their peers in their proven commitment to serve their clients with professionalism and high ethical standards. | | |
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