The Heat are ON FIRE! 5 Actions to Burn Up the Courts

The headline in the Times today says it all:

Stars Lead Late Rally as Heat Advances

Of course I was rootin' for the home team..."In the finale, [LeBron] James and Dwyane Wade alternated big shots and suffocating stops as they crushed the Bulls’ spirit and ruthlessly erased a 12-point deficit in the final 3 minutes 2 seconds," the New York Times reported breathlessly. The Miami Heat beat the Chicago Bulls 83 - 80.

So what does this have to do with strategic leadership, the theme of this blog? Actually, a lot.

http://tinyurl.com/3wyvwmt

See the Heat were down 12 points -- it looked like a Bulls victory, game over...but LeBron, Dwyane, and Chris Bosh and the rest of the team didn't get the memo. And that's part of what sets strategic leaders apart. They're playing a different game.

When I write about the founding fathers and framers of the U.S. Constitution, I don't have to go far to find examples of that different game...think of George Washington and the Continental Army encamped at Valley Forge, crossing the Delaware or leading the far bigger and more professional British army on a wild goose chase up and down the eastern seaboard. Washington didn't know he was defeated by the major military power of the 1770s. Never-the-less, it was General Cornwallis who surrendered at Yorktown, not vice versa.

When George Hanbury began his tenure as city manager of Portsmouth, Virginia, he missed the notice that the city should be razed to the ground and rebuilt. He simply rolled up his sleeves and turned the city around. When Herb Kelleher had to sell a plane to make payroll, he missed the message from the competition that he should abandon his project to start a new airline. Instead, he and CEO Howard Putnam built a profitable, unique business that is still flying high. (The original competitors are long gone.)

In Conventional Wisdom, I recount these and other stories of strategic leaders who don't give up just because someone else thinks they should. What does it take? Here are 5 actions we can all take to "burn up the courts" and be successful in tough times.

1. Know where you're headed: The Heat were headed to the Championship -- not just the playoffs. Washington was headed for an independent nation. Hanbury was headed for the return of a historic seaport where people wanted to live, work, and visit. They all had a driving, living VISION.
2. Have a strategy: None of the top basketball players are just winging it any more than the successful executives. They all have a strategy and a plan. Of course, the plan has to be adjusted to deal with reality on the ground. LeBron, Dwyane, and Chris had a game plan, they had practiced and practiced, and at the end of the game knew they had to step up the pressure and simply stop the Bulls in their tracks. When Hanbury was asked to work his magic on Ft. Lauderdale, he ran into stiff opposition. He adjusted his strategy but kept the pressure on the opposition by continuing to move forward. When the French fleet arrived off Yorktown, Washington knew he had Cornwallis trapped and the troops charged the redoubts.
3. Focus between your ears: Every new story on the brain and how it functions and the neuroscience of leadership and success shows the same thing that Henry Ford pointed out in the last millennium: "Whether you think you can or think you can't, you're right." Top athletes must have a mental game to win and hire success coaches to keep them sharp or to get back on track. Washington is well known for beginning to construct his winning character as a young man and learning from early, disastrous mistakes. Military historians may argue over how good a general he was, but there is no arguing with the results he got because of his tough mental discipline.
4. Adopt Morita Psychology: Dr. Shoma Morita developed a powerful approach to dealing with the challenges of life. It comes down to this formula: Know Your Purpose. Feel Your Feelings. Do What You Must Do. Of course this prescription is difficult and almost impossible for some folks but not for strategic leaders. When public safety unions hired a sky writing plane to fly over the local stadium spelling out the message, "Fire Hanbury," he certainly wasn't a happy camper and he couldn't ignore his emotions. But he knew his purpose was to put the city back on a firm financial footing while transforming Ft. Lauderdale from a spring break wasteland into a vibrant, modern city. He kept to his message of fiscal responsibility with a promise of better times to come. At his retirement from the city, he was praised by the unions because he fulfilled his promises, and ignored their emotional meltdowns.
5. Be relentless: When LeBron was interviewed at the end of that exciting winning game last night he said simply, and to the point, “There’s no sense of relief right now. We still got work to do.” As the founding fathers found out rather soon after the peace treaty with Britain (and as emerging governments are finding out today,) when the bullets stop flying there is still lots of work to do. Washington chaired the Constitutional Convention that put together a governing structure to save the barely united state from anarchy, dissolution, civil war, and absorption into Britain, France, and Spain. It's the last 3 minutes of the game...time to push! Sink 12 points and stop the offence and outsmart the defense.

It's time to Turn Up the Heat!
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(c) Rebecca Staton-Reinstein, President, Advantage Leadership, Inc.
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Read more about the game in the New York Times: http://tinyurl.com/3wyvwmt

World-Changing Anniversaries

This week marks two world-changing anniversaries -- they will go unnoticed on your Outlook calendar or CNN's news crawl. You won't hear your favorite NPR or PBS commentator wax eloquent about these propitious days. The blogosphere and talk show hosts, left, right, and center, will not be foaming at the mouth about them...BUT...

On May 25, 1787, the U.S. Constitutional Convention officially opened in Philadelphia. Delegates from 12 of the 13 states were drifting in with different agendas and expectations. Some thought they were just going to spend a few weeks making some amendments to the existing Articles of Confederation that had governed the new nation for a handful of years. Some weren't sure what was going to happen but they knew something had to be done to get the country out of the crisis at hand. A few had come to defend the status quo and try to stop any changes from being passed. And then there was that core group of conspirators that were preparing to commit treason for the second time...but more about them later...

What was that crisis facing the U.S. in 1787? A few years after the hard-fought Revolution, the country was on the verge of collapse.

• With no central currency or monetary policy, states printed their own worthless paper money, driving triple-digit inflation.
  
• Inflation led to foreclosures on many farms in the largely agricultural nation.
  
• Taking matters into their own hands and led by Revolutionary soldier Captain Shays, a gaggle of Massachusetts farmers closed down the courts that were taking their farms, and marched on the arsenal in Springfield, declaring a second revolution. Although they were routed by the state militia, Shays' Rebellion sent a shock wave through the country.
  
• The British, Spanish, and French were circling like vultures waiting to pick apart the new nation like road kill.
  
• Meanwhile the states were feuding with one another over boundaries, fishing and navigation rights, and trade. Several were preparing to go to war while others considered abandoning the fragile union and going it alone or allying with a foreign power.
  
• And what of the Confederation Congress? It was impotent since it could not impose any legislation on the sovereign states and could only beg for money, which was seldom forthcoming. The Articles could not be amended unless all 13 states agreed and that seldom happened.

Back to those treasonous conspirators...James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, Ben Franklin, and a handful of others decided that the time had come to overthrow the Articles of Confederation and establish a new constitution that would have authority over the states. To this end they called the convention, connived to get Congress to approve the session, and enlisted George Washington to come as a representative from Virginia and provide the political cover they needed to create the new constitution.

Of course, the Convention, as one of its first acts, elected Washington to preside over the meeting. And this brings us to our second important date, May 29, 1787.

On this day, the conspirators tipped their hand to the shock of many of the delegates. Edmund Randolph, the Governor of Virginia and host of the Convention, rose to present his opening remarks on the crisis and then read out the Virginia Plan. Authored for the most part by James Madison, it laid out a radical proposal for a republican form of government with representation of the people in a tripartite organization of legislative, executive, and executive branches. These were designed to check and balance one another. This bombshell plan became the agenda for debate that lasted for another four months. But in the end, the Constitution that we know today was written and then ratified by enough states to go into effect.

As the Convention ebbed and flowed, the delegates used many of the techniques we recognize today as strategic planning. In my new book, Conventional Wisdom: How Today's Leaders Plan, Perform, and Progress Like the Founding Fathers, 20 contemporary leaders describe how they use these same techniques.

• Luda Kopeikina, CEO of Noventra, describes how she encourages debate and idea generation.
  
• John Zumwalt describes how he uses a common mission to drive successful action at PBSJ just as that quintessential mission statement, the Constitution's Preamble, sets out our country's mission.
  
• Howard Putnam, an early CEO at Southwest Airlines, used his planning session to set the floundering company on a new path and unite his team behind it.
  
• Michael Howe describes his evolution as a strategic leader who decided to change the face of health care.
  
• Alan Levine, now Secretary of Health and Hospitals for Louisiana, relates how he turned a county health care system into a world-class operation delivering high value to patients and lower costs to tax payers.

What can we learn from these remarkable anniversaries?

In times of crisis -- seek bold, break-through solutions -- reject the status quo and your comfort zone -- stick to your mission.

(c) Rebecca Staton-Reinstein

Check out the book for more tales of strategic leadership both at the Constitutional Convention and in today's successful organizations. http://ConventionalWisdomCenter.com/

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