Road to Greatness

Greatness is never something conferred, it is something achieved. It is not something given, it is something earned. Greatness is a way of life that is open to anyone who is willing to pay the price. Everything big starts with something little, something small. What is the path to greatness, how do organization and leaders get the tag of “Great Organization” or “Great leader”, here are ten steps which shows the road to greatness:

1.    Leadership: Leadership is the great elevator. It has the ability to lift the people around. Everything rises and falls on leadership. The most successful leaders focus on things that create great results more than the result itself. Great business leaders achieve their results by focusing on the right things day in day out. Great leaders live with integrity and lead by example. They develop a winning strategy and generates great ideas.  They inspire employees to achieve greatness and create a flexible and responsive organization. Leadership has the ability to take the organization to the whole new heights. Leader is someone who can take a group of people to place that they do not think they can go.  

2.   Vision: Vision is the great motivator. Vision has the ability to inspire and lift people’s experience.

A good leader leads people where they don’t want to go and make it. A great leader leads people where they don’t want to go and make it and like it.  Great leaders set the vision and secure buy in of people on where you want to take the company to. Great leaders not only need to set out what you want to do, they also need to set out what it would mean when you get there. All great leaders are visionary.

3.   Action: Action is the great separator. Action separates those who are wishers from those who are accomplishers. A simple parallel can be drawn from what happens to an “idea” you generate. You get lots of great idea, it is not the great idea that counts, it is what you do with that great idea is key. The leader who achieve and those who don’t, it almost always is based on there are those who act upon what they feel, believe and have conviction over and there are people that never act on it. Musician say that the hardest part of practicing is taking the instrument out of the case. To begin is to be half done. That is what we need to be do with our ideas. How do we create great ideas, how do we make it happen, by taking action on them. Action is a great separator. It separates the rich from the poor, winner from the whiners. Action get things done. To take action, leaders are committed to two things, a) Speed; and b) Flexibility.

4.     Passion: Passion is the great generator. Passion generates energy. Success is the not the result of spontaneous combustion, you must first set yourself on fire. High energy people are people with passion. No trait is more noticeable in the leaders than the passion they share for their people and their companies. They simply love what they do. They have a sense of mission that comes from the heart. Gives the energy drive and enthusiasm that is contagious in the centre for leading the organization. To be successful you need to love what you do. Passion fuels the leader and the people with conviction. Passion fuels the leader and the people with courage. Passion fuels the leader and the people with commitment. Passion fuels the leader and the people with increased energy. Let us live in the harness of striving mightily, let us run the risk of wearing out rather than rusting out. 

5.   Strategy: Strategy is the great navigator. Strategy navigates for us. Hope is not a strategy. Hope will not lead you anywhere, you need to act to reach someplace. Strategic thinker looks at the organization from many angles. Leaders have kaleidoscope thinking i.e. see things from all possible angles. They always look at things differently to solve a problem rather than following the conventional way of solving it. Leaders always keeps focus on what they do the best and what the customer needs most. This is the forefront of their strategy.

6.   Family: Family is the great indicator. Family is the great indicator of how successful as a leader you have become. If you have good solid family life, it is the indication of your potential odd of succeeding are much greater.

7.     Attitude: Attitude is the great compensator. A person with a right attitude makes up a lot for lack of talent or lack of gifts. There would always be people in the team who are not gifted, who are not as talented and not as smartest but they have a great attitude. They just hung in there with you and accomplish their job, they do it because they have the right attitude. On the other hand there are people who are smart and talented but their attitude just sucks. Not because they could not do it, but because they would not do it.  Attitude makes up for lot of other deficiencies in our life if we just have great attitude. Leaders have positive attitude. As a general rule, great leader tend to look at challenges as opportunities and seeks to make out the most from the difficult situation. The more mistake you make the faster you learn, this is the mantra great leaders follow day in and day out.

8.  Momentum: Momentum is the great exaggerator. Momentum just takes you to a whole new level. If you have momentum going for you, it makes you look better than you really are, it lifts everybody. When you have it, it is the great exaggerator in a positive way, but when you lack it, it is the great exaggerator in a negative way. When you don’t have momentum it makes you look worse than what you are. Leaders are like thermostat, they set the temperature and managers are like thermometer, they record the temperature. 

9.    Empowerment: Empowerment is the great emancipator. Empowering people frees up people and frees up organization. You are not going to attract or retain a top quality people under those silly and obsolete forms of bureaucratic or commander control leadership. You cannot release the brain power of any organization by using whips and chains. You get the best out of people by empowering them and being supporting and getting out of their way. Leaders keep their think time by empowering their teams. Ownership and decision should be at the lowest level possible in the organization.

10.  Results: Results are the great evaluator. What gets measured gets managed. What you don’t inspect they don’t respect. Great leader always like that bad news should better come out real fast, so that you can reassess and get going again.

Greatness is to lead without a title, regardless of your title at work be a team builder. Greatness comes by building human connections and relationships. Greatness is leaving everything you touch better then you found it. Greatness is doing great work whether one notices or not, its best source of happiness.

Source: Learnings from the works of Johan C Maxwell and Robin Sharma