following, much different from leaders:
Transform their way of thinking from simply thinking outside of the box; they must have the know-how to bury the box and be damn certain that the enemy cannot find the box and dig it up. Understand that failure is the greatest teacher; “victory” instructs the simple, “failure” the wise; success teaches few lessons, but failure teaches many. Debrief for lessons learned and learn from them – the failures that is! Know “how-to” use fresh ideas, hone them for efficient and effective integration, and model for reproduction using the ideas as the basis for modeling to learn, teach, and lead into the future: Instruct a shared-vision by influencing trust through balance; Demonstrate by example the benefits and features found in success; Experience the glory after executing process and procedure flawlessly; and Assess all areas of the environment to reshape and reconfigure process to ensure enduring success. Understand the know-how for using the Seven “D’s” of Courage: (1) Desire: Become a champion of change; a major part of a solution; (2) Dream: Achieve a preferred future picture with just leaders; (3) Decisiveness: Recognize the process of trust, competence, and influence to encourage and inspire a journey to find your voice; (4) Dare: The courage to act outweighs the fear to not! (5) Dedication: Remain committed to fulfill the responsibility within a call; (6) Direction: Achieve a clear plan of influenced and proactive change; and (7) Dependence: Rely on achieving greatness – not effectiveness. Transfer the knowledge and use of the “The Morale Constructs Strategy.” The secret to building a shared-vision across an organization is to get the associates to think less of their motives and more of the mission at hand. Achieving this measure requires trust, credibility, character, and an understanding of your situational awareness at all times. Ensure the members of the community each understands the competitive forces against the system and the potential outcome should the forces breach the talent fields of the organization. Turn the mission into a crusade that everyone is a major influence to narrow the competitions base of support and room for tactical maneuvering. Always lean on “right,” as the good guy’s white hat never hits the ground due to his convictions and disposition for righteousness. Practice the skills found within the Memorandum of Understanding and ensure that everyone does the same. Our research shows that building extraordinary people and organizations requires a process that facilitates a hierarchy of six discipline
d stages with a foundation that also translates the process into increased effectiveness and efficiency to raise the overall performance value and growth – specifically within the individual and organizational life cycle. The foundation is a simple code of conduct, known as the “Memorandum of Understanding.”
Establishing Principles to Achieve Personal Proficiency and Professional Mastery
You now have before you the opportunity to take the steps that achieve a high level of personal mastery for your life. It requires the adoption of a “code” as a living organism into your life. How can you build awareness, use your experiences in implementing a new approach to deportment, and develop a strategy, which includes resolve and ethical conduct? This is the task before you.
It sounds like the normal work that we all know and do so well. But be cautioned, it is not! When we bind the code with rules and regulations, reporting and accountability to force conformity to standards, we will fail – to oppose change by way of fear is not what we want. Rather, achieving personal mastery is a continuous, yet discontinuous pursuit of ethical behavior that ultimately manifests into a quest of improving the human spirit; to pursue good, to do the right thing in our lives, work and in the workplace. The code says that who ever should adopt it into his/her life, will possess a level of courage – both physically and emotionally – to execute the necessary task that drives performance that exemplify the highest level of personal conviction.
Why establish a code to live and operate by? The answer is simple; establishing a code or set of principles ensures a level of conduct (code of conduct) for healthy lifestyle living and workplace etiquette. This code of conduct is also known as a “Memorandum of Understanding.” As a code of conduct, the Memorandum of Understanding provides a resource to assist people in their personal development, growth, guidance, and assessment in the leadership of self. The Memorandum of Understanding establishes a strict perspective for instructing successful practices, theories, and beliefs that drives people to achieve a successful future (how you intend to conduct yourself into the future for others to emulate).
The Memorandum of Understanding, followed by and inspired from the LeaderShaped Leader, is also designed for people to learn broadly; to inspire the service out of generosity for others; and to prepare them to lead courageously into the future. A Memorandum of Understanding must encourage a perspective to become firmly grounded in the potential for successful growth using the following constructs (A Portfolio Management Series):
The Cardinal Rules The Guiding Precepts The Forms of Disposition The General Orders The Strategy Forward – Establishing Professional Mastery The Centers of Gravity
The Cardinal Rules. The Cardinal Rules are a set of guidelines that are invaluable for people and organizations to follow while planning and executing at the strategic or tactical level. These rules, once established by the individual(s) or teams are the rules that govern forward movement and must not change.
The Guiding Precepts. The Guiding Precepts are designed to inform people what they should and should not be doing in accordance with executing a well designed strategy to win. They also inform of the reasons “why” an action must occur and the repercussions should the individual and/or organization fail at meeting such a task.
The Forms of Disposition. The Forms of Disposition offer a substantive transformation in “thought” about how people achieve a perspective on things in life. It refers to an orchestrated, systemic and revolutionary new world-view resulting in a “change” of societies, cultures, and marketplaces due to behavioral perspective. This is today often called “systems theory,” which sees a web of relationships coalescing to become something greater than the parts. Individuals must be able to look at things from a perspective that they are always changing and evolving into new forms – thinking “out-of-the-box!” We are doomed to a slow death unless radical change occurs in the way we think. Change your way of thinking or die a slow death.
The General Orders. The General Orders are broad, community-wide “need statements,” designed to encompass a variety of related issues in a person’s life or within the life cycle of an organization. These related issues are referred to as “Guiding Objectives,” which are specific items that need to be addressed. The Guiding Strategies (developed to fit current and future circumstance) are the methods identified for addressing the Guiding Objectives, and the Guiding Policies are the specific action steps that are recommended to implement the Guiding Strategies. The General Orders, all eleven of them, offer the ability to explore implications in an open and reflective manner and reinforce each other in providing a coherency and wholeness often lacking in life cycles.
The Strategy Forward – Establishing Professional Mastery. The traditional values are the foundation of the modern day; that was yesterday. Tomorrow, you have an opportunity to create commitment and the needed momentum to establish, publish, share, and teach a different set of life’s code, values, and ethics to journey into the future. After much hard work, you are prepared to develop a strategy to move forward and plan the next steps to target critical successes for winning the Future Picture. What a legacy you will leave when executed with personal and professional bearing for others to follow. This is the way of the future. This is a new chapter!
The Centers of Gravity. Just as time changes, so does the internal and external influence in your life and in the life cycle of an organization. The Centers of Gravity are the dynamics within a process that offer the greatest impact on the overall system when change happens. They offer a high level of “value” and return on your energy “investment.” When combined with the concept of parallel deposits (creating energy from various perspectives in a short period of time), the Centers of Gravity make possible the seemingly impossible task of realizing success in changing paradigms. The Centers of Gravity places significant influence on the five established epicenters of any changing system to receive desired effects: Leadership, Processes, Infrastructure, Population, and Action Units.
In summary, this Memorandum of Understanding offers an opportunity to free up our actions as public servants (leaders responsible for influencing social relationships). It is empowering, it is enabling and it grounds us in a public way on the fundamentals that we all must share. There is no ethical malaise.
It is important to realize that the “new” is not a finding from what has been lost. Rather, we are like the journey of the Scarecrow in search of a brain