A Class with Drucker - Headway | Work on yourself

DEVELOP EXPERTISE OUTSIDE YOUR FIELD ■ 77
him or her a brief story from a printed sheet. This individual was then
asked to identify one of the remaining four class members still outside to
re-enter the room. He told the same story to the next individual entering
the room, <strong>with</strong>out reference to notes. This was repeated, until the last person
entered the room and heard the story and retold it to the group.
The story is usually so different from what I read to the first person
that it bears little resemblance to it. Males become females, jobs are different,
times and actions are not done by the same person, even the basic
point of the story sometimes changes in retelling. The police chiefs,
especially trained to remember critical incidents, were just as bad as the
others. At the end of the exercise, everyone clearly understands the difficulty
of communicating a simple message through five levels of management.
When backgrounds and specialties differ, communication is
even more difficult.
Today’s strategic leader has additional challenges. Technology enables
change to take place at near light-year velocity, and <strong>with</strong> much greater
penalty for failure than ever before. The penalty for the organization
extends deeper than simply the loss of a leader of great promise because
a leader’s actions have a much longer timeline. A tactical leader may affect
what happens over a period of weeks, months, or maybe a year. But, the
strategic leader’s decisions, both good and bad, reach farther and farther
into the future.
Applying <strong>Drucker</strong>’s Wisdom
Peter defined the problem early for us, and pointed the way to its solution.
First, one must master at least one distinctly separate discipline,
and it should be outside of business. But this is only part of what the
would-be strategic leader must do. You may be the greatest leader of
____________ (you fill in the blank). But if you try to lead in the same
way at a much higher level, <strong>with</strong> no preparation for the higher level job,
your success is far from assured. Your personal environment has
changed, but you may continue to act as if you were in the same, more
limited, old environment.
A very successful tactical leader I knew who didn’t make it was an
army officer. Let’s call him “Mike.” Mike was one of the finest tactical
leaders that I ever came across, either in the military or civilian worlds.
I met Mike while attending the Industrial College of the Armed Forces