“The Power of Leadership”

I pulled a favorite book from the shelf and will to share a thought with you from Bob Tasca, a legendary Lincoln-Mercury car dealer from Seekonk, MA, USA.  Bob’s book is U Will B Satisfied and I recommend it to any leader interested in “customer happiness”.

Many business people seem to lose sight of the difference between managing and leading.  The differernce is really simple and it’s critical to running a customer happiness business.  You see, managers are hired for one reason: to solve problems.  In a perfect world, without any problems, managers would have nothing to do.  We all live in a world however where problems are happening, they are the penalty for living.  In a business where you are trying to satisfy the customer, and if possible make her happy, managers are critical; they’re the people who must solve your customer’s problems.

Remember what defines a business problem: something that adversely affects or will affect your customer.  If it doesn’t adversely affect your customer, it’s not a business problem.  Too many business people waste time on things that aren’t their business’ real problems.  They don’t solve problems, they try to avoid them.

Leaders, however, don’t solve problems, they prevent them.  That means they’re essentially forward looking, they must be able to see today how a present problem can be eliminated in the future.  The best way to solve a problem of course is to eliminate it so it can’t happen again.  Managers on the other hand are backward looking, they must collect the facts necessary to solve an existing problem, all of which began in the past.  We need both sorts of people, but leaders are unique and very hard to find.

  “The creative problem solver sees problems everyone else sees, but thinks of solutions no one else has considered.” – Paul J. Meyer

Have a great day!

Shawn

Russ M. Miller, LLIF – Chairman & CEO
Performance Institute (Human Capital Development)
Global CEO Academy (Management Training)
Sunny Hong Zhang – Managing Partner – China
Shawn M. Miller – Managing Partner – USA

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