Part One: The Leader’s Checklist
Organizational leadership has its greatest impact in times of uncertainty and change. When markets are predictable, when change is not in the offing, leaders can coast, at least for a while. It is when uncertainty becomes the norm and turbulence more commonplace that a Leader’s Checklist becomes most consequential—a time, that is, much like the present.36
To prepare for such moments, we have thus far culled core leadership principles from informed observers, academic researchers, development programs, leaders’ assessments, and program participants. In the process, we have discovered a vital skill set that cuts across all sources—capacities such as thinking strategically, acting decisively, and communicating persuasively. Armed with these core precepts, we have also seen how customized principles are essential for leading specific organizations, playing distinct roles within them, running firms in diverse national settings, and facing varying market conditions. Leadership of Indian companies, for example, requires greater emphasis on broad mission and social purpose than is common in the West. Finally, we looked at the need to customize the Leader’s Checklist around an individual’s immediate world. For a soldier in Iraq, additional principles are required that are distinct from those essential for a salesperson at Microsoft or a firefighter in New York.
With the creation of both core and mission-specific checklists, systematic testing and frequent revision are the essential next steps. In the case of one financial services corporation, for instance, many of the leadership principles that its senior bankers thought vital proved to have little impact when carefully studied—but a small subset did, in fact, result in measurable leadership impact.
Appreciating the value of a Leader’s Checklist is, of course, no guarantee that the list will be applied. To close the critical knowing-doing gap, six learning avenues have proven valuable: self-directed study of leadership moments, coaching and mentoring, stretch experiences, after-action review of personal leadership moments, experience with extremely stressful leadership moments, and observing the leadership moments of others. By engaging in this multipronged approach, individuals will be more ready to apply their own Leader’s Checklist at moments of uncertainty and change.
To be most sustainable, however, a Leader’s Checklist needs to be dynamic and adaptable, not static or fixed—constantly updated to reflect new situations and accumulated experience. With repeated study of experiences such as AIG’s failure and the successful Chilean rescue operation, a Leader’s Checklist should become progressively more grounded in evidence and more complete in coverage.
A checklist for leaders is certainly no substitute for comprehension and judgment, any more than the pilot’s or surgeon’s checklist is for flying a plane or operating on a patient successfully. The Leader’s Checklist is meant to simply be a trigger, and for that purpose, simplicity is essential, as is completeness. Application depends entirely upon the owner’s commitment to generate and then use the checklist at a time when it will make a difference. Knowing what a difference checklist principles can make should be all the incentive necessary to assure their deployment.