Resource Management Innovations
The Leader in the Kevlar Suit
As a leader, your work is primarily future oriented. Providing what my clients kindly refer to as Sherpa-Services. Shepherding those entrusted to your care & accountability from current to desired state. In previous postings we have spoken about how extreme some reactions can be to change … as the threat perceived to an individual or community when their sense of known and normal is put at risk. To them, their reaction is neither blind nor irrational. Risk assessment and mitigation is now (regrettably) an element of leadership development.
During a consulting engagement in the Southern United States I had the opportunity to meet with a Mega-Church Pastor and his staff. The sanctuary of this facility would seat in excess of 14,000 on a Sunday. What struck me was this particular Pastor had a staff which included a personal protection detail, (read: body guards). Professional, armed body guards for a Pastor! Who knew? There was a uniformed as well as a plain clothes detail. I arrived early one day, and as it happened in time for the security detail briefing. Being an old soldier myself and having been assigned to a personal protection detail this brought some great memories … but in a church? This was a first for me. It was a very practical lesson in the exposure to risk leadership assumes, regardless of industry or sector.
Being on the inside of this organization I was also privy to observing Wells Fargo ‘wheel’ the morning offering out to a waiting armored truck. As I shared my ‘experience’ with an office colleague at the site … she opened her purse to show me her own personal protection detail … a pearl handled ‘Smith & Wesson’. Let me remind you (as I had to remind myself) … the venue is a church, where a community of faith can come together in freedom to worship. Freedom it seems has never been free and the communities most basic values are at risk. In some cases, quite literally.
Throughout history, the physical target of those attacks have been (manifest in) our leadership. I share this word picture with you not to alarm you or offend you, but to bring some awareness and understanding of the cost of leadership, past and present.
Consider if you will the Battle of Saratoga (1777). Historians remind us that this battle is considered the turning point of the American Revolution. During that battle Daniel Morgan, Commander of Morgan’s Rifles ordered his Patriot soldiers: “Forget the poor fellows who fight for sixpence a day. Concentrate your fire on the epaulet men.” Epaulets are the ornamental shoulder pieces worn by military officers. In other words, Morgan wanted his men to concentrate their fire on the officers, not the rank & file soldiers. As a result of this single tactic, the officer ranks of British General John Burgoyne were so depleted that he surrendered.
Every organization has its epaulet men and women. Leadership then as now remains the target. Given the exposure to risk, as well as the cost (to the enterprise) of failed leadership … before anyone assumes the Kevlar Suit … it is mission critical to have the training and readiness necessary to execute strategy.
Leadership is not something else that senior technical staff is required to perform … simply because they are the best stringer of code we have. Words associated with leadership such as honor, duty, pride and valor are not lost. They are being reborn in this next generation of Vision Casters and Mission Builders in both our private and public sector. We owe them a debt of gratitude for their service in taking a point position as we manifest our pioneering spirit in them and through them.
With Sincere Thanks.
Rick @ RMI
Posted By: Rick Kneeshaw 2010/04/23
Categories: Leadership and Management