Today’s challenge of leadership is a particularly difficult and typically unacknowledged challenge. Many programs in leadership development and management training tend to focus on abstract models that have very little correlation to day-to-day operations and practical problem solving. This is one of the misguided influences of school and college training, which both tend to make very simple activities excessively verbose and abstract. There is an implicit training that also takes place. The value of time is undermined by the school approach to training and development. Business, management, and leadership should place a premium on the value of time. Time is money to be sure, but time is also life; life is final and irretrievable. Therefore, time is extremely valuable in business, management, and leadership. Training programs should reflect simple fact. However, many if not most training programs do not particularly school training programs. Training programs that overcomplicate and intellectualize business problems, communicate that time is not essential. To communicate that time is valuable is to seek to find an answer or a solution in the most effective, efficient, and expeditious way possible. This is not to suggest that theory, planning, and abstraction are irrelevant. Quite the contrary. The Shinsei Institute™ and the Shinsei Method of Training and Development™ emphasize that management and leadership are essential thinking activities. However, how people think and what they think about makes all the difference in the world in terms of results, profitability, and quality. One of the important themes and ideas of the Shinsei Method is that business is a rational and logical activity. By consequence, business follows basic logical, scientific, and natural principles. Profit is also logical. Business management processes, procedures, and policies strive to abstract and complicate things as schools tend to train students to do, do not follow the logical process of profit. And, profit will suffer as a result. Profit and profitability will always be logical and rational no matter that the rational approach is out of favor or not trendy. More efficient processes, policies, and procedures will always be more profitable when compared to overly complicated processes, policies, and procedures. So, what do many managers and business executives often seek to do? Overcomplicate everything just like they learned in school. Therefore, one of the first things that the Shinsei Method suggests and that today’s leader must do, it go in a different direction than so-called conventional wisdom because conventional wisdom is typically wasteful and unprofitable.
Fundamentally, management and leadership are professional activities in problem solving. Solving problems and finding workable solutions is what managers and leaders do, or at least it is what they should do. This requires setting value and time as key goals. The importance of those goals should be reflected in everything and at all levels of business operations from how managers and leaders plan business growth to the training programs they implement and the people they hire etc… When time is valued, the most efficient methods are always sought. Notice this is in perfect accord with the business logic of profit and profitability. All things being equal, more efficient practices will be more profitable. Therefore, to set time and value as key goals from the beginning is oriented toward profit. Clearly then time and value should be key goals in business operations. So, why are they not usually a key goals?
Striving for value tends to be an unpopular prospect in America today. This constitutes a significant challenge of leadership. This challenge is undervalued in most leadership training programs or discussions of quality management in two ways. First, it is not acknowledged at all except in the Shinsei Method™ of Training and Development. Second, and this compounds the problem and the challenge, value is the essence of leadership. Value is at the core of successful business operations. Value is achieved by seeking greater efficiency, effectiveness, and consequently higher profitability. Value is what many investors seek in financial investments, and that return or value is achieved in very specific ways. First and foremost value is achieved through management competence. But, how is competence is achieved? Competence is achieved through the long term commitment to solving problems, finding practical solutions, and above all learning from those experience. This is what gives work experience value. It is what gives management experience value. In other words, it is impossible to avoid the importance of value in business, management, and leadership. Problem solving is the basis for value. However, when there is an environment as there is today particularly in America that puts pressure on individual leaders not to seek practical solutions but instead to chase quick fixes, it makes it all the more difficult to develop problem solving as a habit. One individual can strive toward value and seek to find practical solutions, but business (or leadership for that matter) is not made of one individual. One individual can make a difference, but only if there are others who also follow the lead established by the individual. It is not enough simply to wish or want to set an example. There has to be some cooperation from the other people involved. This is true of family management, business management, and any team activity. While it is true that people can be motivated to some extent by the actions of people in leadership roles, a certain amount of motivation must come from within. This is one reason that leaders also tend to be managers or someone else in a position of authority. There are some minor nuances in this situation because individuals can also be positively motivated to want to follow a leaders–this is preferable and typically based on character, justice, and fairness. Or, people will follow knowing that if they do not their jobs may be at stake. This is always implied in work situations, and typically does not need to be stated outright. Sometimes it does, but that depends on the circumstance. It is stated far too often however because of the character deficiency. Threats are usually issued from a position of insecurity and weakness, which of course is the diametric opposite of the type of leadership that the Shinsei Method™ advocates: leadership based on the three pillars of individuality, profitability, and well-being. These are inner-balance, inner-strength, and self-trust. To be balanced, strong, and trustful inside means to be clear about what is to be achieved, how it is to be achieved, and to have some level of support preferable from senior levels, which is often not the case. Hence, many principles of leadership like problem solving pose a significant challenge to develop in today’s business and cultural climate.
There are other cultures notably in Japan where a Samurai or a Bushido tradition are still very much alive, and these traditions help to foster a deeper appreciation for the importance of common sense, logic, and problem solving. These kinds of self-cultivating traditions sees problem solving as character-building, and character as a key value to pursue and develop. On the other hand, in America there is a lot of lip service paid to character and character-building, while in practical terms character (like time and value) tends to be undercut in terms of recognition, appreciation, cooperation, support, and compensation. If individuals are not compensated in accordance with the talent, competence, and character they exemplify or pursue, not many people will seek to develop or value competence or character for that matter. This creates a significant deficiency for management that affects every level of the business enterprise because ultimately will decide how disciplined a leader is, how foresightful a leader is, how judicious a leader is. Notice these principles also affect cost, risk, liability, and ultimately profitability.
The appreciation for character, value, and time for that matter is reiterated in various sports like Sumo Japan’s national sport. The recognition of value and character are supported throughout the Japanese culture in Japanese business practices, in the expectations that Japan’s society-at-large has toward leaders, managers, and employees, in Japanese business advertisements, in songs, in movies, in books, etc. This is not to say that everyone in Japan practices the tenets that made the Samurai world-famous: justice, courage, benevolence, politeness, veracity, sincerity, loyalty, self-restraint, independence, value and character. The samurai did not have a monopoly on these ideals. These values were also important themes for the founders of the American republic who promoted these themes in their public and private writings. These values were important in the chivalrous code of the medieval knights of Europe. These values are also integral to the training and development of the American elite military units such as the Navy S.E.A.L.s, First Special Forces Operational Detachment Delta, the Green Berets, and many others. Many both inside and outside of modern elite military forces have also recognized the carry-over from these themes and values to business management and leadership. What most trainers, educators, and writers do not acknowledge is the significant challenge these values present for today’s leader in today’s business, economic, cultural, and political climate. There is a significant social pressure on individuals from school onward not to consider character traits as too important to develop. The results are predictably poor in terms of performance and quality.
While ideals like sincerity, loyalty, justice, courage, self-restraint, and independence are often advertised and touted as noble ideals to pursue–and they are–very few people strive to make these goals relevant in their everyday lives. This includes in the workplace. Employees that demonstrate initiative in many corporate settings are often shunned or targeted for reprimand including termination. Customers that attempt to show loyalty toward a particular brand are often treated dismissively in various ways. For example, customers are routinely placed on excessive hold when they seek to obtain clarification on products or services that under other circumstances would have been thought out and resolved as a part of the product development process. The dismissive attitude communicated toward customers in many business practices has become commonplace with certain places like California being the most egregious in this attitude. But, a dismissive attitude is not only unprofessional, it is illogical. To be dismissive toward customers is to be dismissive toward business and business profit. This is basic business logic. For example, it is common for organizations to obtain expensive equipment and not train people on how to maximize its use calling into question the reason for making the business expenditure in the first place. In this case another option is to attempt to fully utilize (and extend the value) of current equipment. This practice of focusing on the short term is established in American schools that encourage students to throw things away or buy something new–usually on credit– rather than attempting to repair it to extend value. Notice this latter practice of repairing things would not only encourage competence in making repairs, but it also further establishes self-reliance and the appreciation of value, which extends to other areas such as trying to repair a relationship rather than catastrophically terminating it at the first challenge or inconvenience. Those who possess important skills in mending and repairing, tend to rely on others less. This tendency also contributes to the development of competence, character, and thus leadership. It should be easy to see how principles are inter-related and the value that character actually has for management ability. This also demonstrates why the Japanese Samurai–and others–sought to develop individual character to improve long term results. Character-development also used to be a very common practice and attitude in America. American practicality was once a point of American pride. It is not today, yet the absence of a practical mentality creates the environment in which today’s leader must survive let alone thrive. The fact that fundamental values tend to be undermined and undervalued does not make them any less relevant. This is a crucial point that is not always easy to observe or practice. It is at the core of the challenge of leadership. The less common leadership traits become, the more valuable they are to develop, and the more difficult they are to maintain. This is true of precious metals, gems, and money; and it is true of leadership characteristics.
The challenge of leadership today is to learn how to develop these traits and maintain them with a sense of purpose, trust, balance, and strength. If values like courage tend to socially underestimated, there is little social incentive to develop them.
A leader who demonstrates benevolence, tends to encourage it in others. Moreover, he or she tends to encourage people who follow to do likewise. This begins to create a culture of benevolence. However, this is not enough. If a value is to become an important business value, it must be recognized and appreciated in tangible ways. Not just with platitudes, plaques or temporary accolades, but in direct compensation structures like promotions or raises. Unfortunately, this is a step that business owners and executive managers are often reluctant to take for everyone that is except themselves. This is not consistent with the theme or value of benevolence. However, self-centeredness is the diametric opposite of business and leadership. Everything that a manager and every other part of that team does affects every other part. This is the crucial leadership and management lesson that seems much easier for Japanese managers to intuit. This insight is also a part of the Japanese cultural experience passed down through the way and spirit of the Samurai among other influences. For example, it is very easy for a Japanese manager to intuit that customers represent the primary source of business profit because customers represent the primary source of business revenue. Therefore, to take care of the customer at every level is to take care of the business, and this includes taking care of the employees (in a positive way). One way of taking care of employees is to establish a business culture that encourages a business-centric approach. Leadership values like courage, benevolence, sincerity, politeness, loyalty, self-restraint, and independence create a business-centric and business-focused approach because they create an environment that is more conducive to trust, cooperation, and a sense of security. This, of course, is communicated out to customers in how employees interact with the public. This is self-evident and basic. Yet, it is very easy for Japanese managers to see why this is relevant to basic business practices, while it has been drummed out of leadership training and development in America where there is an obsession toward quantity over quality, speculation over intrinsic value, and quick-fixes over long-term solutions or prevention. Only the latter of these comparisons is consistent with basic business management and leadership values. However, if today’s leader is to practice those values as a leader, he or she must first acknowledge the current business, political, regulatory, and cultural environment; and then develop a feasible strategy to establish those values not out of charity or some fanciful notion of “taking the high road”; but, by developing a practical strategy given the facts and reality of the matter. And, developing a habit of finding practical solutions is one of the most important goals for that mission. The habit of problem solving also represents one of the most significant challenges of today’s leader since it is a habit that tends to be undercut in many social situations today beginning with schools and colleges. Therefore, the challenge of leadership is to recognize what is still valid and valuable for leadership and business profitability, and then establish those policies, practices, and procedures despite the social pressures not to.