Iacocca’s Nine C’s of Leadership

    9
    0

    USATODAY.com

    Former Chrysler chief Lee Iacocca has “failed” at retirement, he says. His latest project is a new book, Where Have All the Leaders Gone?. The book has made waves because of the political content (not the focus here), but he's also provided a list of leadership traits, something that I think is relevant to discuss here on the Lean Blog.

    The “Nine C's of Leadership:

    • Curiosity
      • Listen to people outside the “Yes, sir” crowd. Read voraciously.
    • Creative
      • Go out on a limb. Leadership is all about managing change.
    • Communicate
      • A simple one. You should be talking to everybody, even your enemies.
    • Character
      • Having the guts to do the right thing. If you don't make it on character, the rest won't amount to much.
    • Courage
      • Courage in the 21st century doesn't mean posturing and bravado. Courage is a commitment to sit down at the negotiation table and talk. If you're a politician, courage means taking a position even when you know it will cost you votes.
    • Conviction
      • Fire in your belly. You've got to really want to get something done.
    • Charisma
      • The ability to inspire. People follow a leader because they trust him or her.
    • Competent
      • Surround yourself with people who know what they're doing. Be a problem solver.
    • Common sense
      • Your ability to reason.

    I can see all of those being good traits for Lean leaders, as well. Be careful, maybe, with “be a problem solver.” Lean leaders don't try to solve all of the problems themselves, they encourage and support their employees to solve problems themselves (when possible) and then stepping in with “solutions” only when necessary (such as cross-functional or value-stream level problems, for example). We don't need Lean leaders to be “heroes,” fixing everything themselves. Then again, being a problem solver is usually better than accepting and tolerating a bad status quo.

    Please check out my main blog page at www.leanblog.org

    The RSS feed content you are reading is copyrighted by the author, Mark Graban.

    , , , on the author's copyright.


    What do you think? Please scroll down (or click) to post a comment. Or please share the post with your thoughts on LinkedIn – and follow me or connect with me there.

    Did you like this post? Make sure you don't miss a post or podcast — Subscribe to get notified about posts via email daily or weekly.


    Check out my latest book, The Mistakes That Make Us: Cultivating a Culture of Learning and Innovation:

    Get New Posts Sent To You

    Select list(s):
    Previous article2007 Lean Accounting Summit "Agenda Reveal"
    Next articleL.A.M.E.: Thinking Lean is About Speed, not Quality
    Mark Graban
    Mark Graban is an internationally-recognized consultant, author, and professional speaker, and podcaster with experience in healthcare, manufacturing, and startups. Mark's new book is The Mistakes That Make Us: Cultivating a Culture of Learning and Innovation. He is also the author of Measures of Success: React Less, Lead Better, Improve More, the Shingo Award-winning books Lean Hospitals and Healthcare Kaizen, and the anthology Practicing Lean. Mark is also a Senior Advisor to the technology company KaiNexus.

    LEAVE A REPLY

    Please enter your comment!
    Please enter your name here

    This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.