The Twisting Road of Leadership – Welcome to StratLeadership

I hope that you’ve found my website because you think it may not be “just another rah-rah leadership site”.  You know the kind, the sites that make you feel inadequate because no matter how you measure up, you’re just not Jack Welch or Bill Gates or Richard Branson or Gail Kelly.  You’re you. Sure, you try to think positively, move your company in new directions, and find that piece of cheese which someone apparently moved on your behalf.  But you do it in your own style and your own way.

It’s okay to learn about these leaders, to admire and even to learn from them, but you and I are not them and need to also create our own way of doing things.  In fact, it’s critical that we do.

Still, those “do it like this” leadership speakers and their books and websites usually don’t speak to you in quite the way you’d like, do they?  No matter how I’ve tried, they don’t speak to me as much as they might.  I’ve read a heap of stuff about Jack Welch, for instance, but I’ll never be the workaholic he is, nor have the combination of technical and managerial brilliance which he possesses.  And, for what it’s worth, it troubles me that he left his second wife to make the Editor of the Harvard Business Review his third!

I think that my core problem with this approach, whether it is to motivation, change management, corporate culture or leadership, is that it assumes that we are always dynamic and enthusiastic.  It assumes that if we just push hard enough then the doors will open, and that if we persevere long enough then the barriers will come tumbling down.  In essence, they assume that life is a zero sum game.  We can be great executives and great partners and great fathers (or mothers) and just all-round great guys (or girls), all at the same time.  I’m not so sure.  Oh yeah, and we can be successful in every way, all the time.

Fair enough, you say, maybe it’s best to look at the ideal and seek to inch toward it day by day, to at least embark on a journey of continuous self-improvement.  Sure, I say in return, perhaps, but I’m still not convinced.  No matter how superhuman we are at any moment, there will still be good days and bad days, great strategies and crap strategies, and fantastic work colleagues and total corporate sociopaths.  That’s the reality of work in the 21^st century, not some corporate nirvana where we sit in bean bags all day drinking our herbal tea while dreaming up the next killer strategy.

So, I’ve set out to deliberately become “not just another” leadership speaker and writer.

I’ve become a speaker and leader who gets their hands dirty and tells like it is.  We no longer need listen to those speakers and writers who treat us as children, who expect us to desire nothing greater than to be just like them!

I’ve tried to take the grab-bag of topics I taught in business schools in three countries, throw it up against the walls of corporate experience, reflected, and looked at what sticks.  For real.  It’s been a wonderful journey in walking the talk, in strutting the stuff, and in experiencing the highs and lows and successes and failures that confront all of us whenever we take risks.

I’ve stared down the strengths and flaws in myself as much as I’ve considered the strengths and flaws of others.  In all of this, I’ve tried hard to remain a good friend, a good husband and a good father at the same time or, more simply, to remain human.

It’s been much harder than I had predicted.  There were times when the ivied walls of academia looked much prettier than the concrete walls of the corporation or the infested storerooms of the retail sector.

But I have also experienced the exhilaration of watching new strategies work tremendously well, built some great teams, and enjoyed serving as coach and mentor for some outstanding people.

I have enjoyed the buzz of seeing myself on TV as I have articulated an industry’s views, heard myself on radio, and seen far more people read my columns and opinion pieces in national newspapers than had ever read my academic work in obscure journal articles.  In the retail sector, I have enjoyed, for the most part, being seen as the “maverick” of our chain!

It’s been a true adventure.  I bet your story is too.  You see, I’m one of “you”, not one of “them”.  I walk the executive journey with a deep awareness of my own foibles and frailties.  Perhaps taking my stories to a wider audience at 40 is about right, since I know that I lacked the maturity to do this in earlier years.  Time does add a dose of self-awareness and a bucket load of tempering experience that the earlier years usually miss.

So, I’m glad you are with me on the journey.  We are sojourners, you and I, pilgrims on the long road to glory.  Our race is much more the 26 mile marathon than the 100 metre sprint.  I can hear the starting pistol now.  Let’s start running.

Let’s share our leadership stories.  Let’s run towards the light, while sharing the odd laughs about our times in the darkness.

Welcome to StratLeadership.  I’m Dr Dave.