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LEADERSHIP PRIORITIES
By
Lee M. Ozley
January, 2011
Over forty years of experience with more than 150 organizations in North America and Europe have provided me with clarity on what the priorities of organizational leaders (union and management alike) should be.
Priority One: providing a satisfactory return on the investment that the owners of the business have made. After all, it’s their money! What’s to keep the investors from taking the money and investing it somewhere else? Then where would we be.


Priority Two: produce and deliver products and/or services that people are willing to buy. Without the customer, we have no business! We must provide products and/or services that are perceived to be worth their cost. If not, the customers will go somewhere else!

Priority Three: take care of the needs of the people who do the work of the business. Organizational leaders seldom, if ever, produce and deliver the product/service of the business. Without the dedicated, consistent, and committed efforts of employees there is no way we can accomplish Priority One and Two! It’s that simple! However, it takes dedicated effort on the part of organizational leaders to create and maintain such a work environment.

Priority Four (LASTLY): take care of the needs of the leadership (themselves) only after the first three priorities have been and are consistently being met.

Too many of today’s leaders have reversed this priority list and made their own self- aggrandizement – perks, money, power, status, etc. - their top priority. Fortunately, more and more often these leaders are receiving their appropriate reward – being asked to ‘seek employment elsewhere’. My hope is that this reward for misaligned priorities will occur more frequently, quickly, and irrevocably.
Examples include the exorbitant bonuses paid to Wall Street employees in the face of mortgage foreclosures, declining employment, severely reduced business volumes and profits for other businesses. Many pundits suggest that Wall Street practices were a major contributor to our most recent recession.

The most poignant example occurred some twenty years ago with one of my clients. I was meeting with the CEO of a large, domestic steel company in my role as his coach. We were meeting aboard his brand new Gulfstream executive jet. He was about to embark on only his third trip in the new aircraft.

We were meeting on his aircraft for two reasons. First, his very busy and tight schedule. Secondly, the topic under discussion was extremely confidential and we wanted to ensure that the word did not leak out.
In the course of our conversation sitting on his airplane at the business jet area of a major US city airport, the on-board telephone rang and he answered the call. The caller was representative from Gulfstream who had sold him his new airplane.

The Gulfstream rep was reporting that he had just gotten off the telephone with the CEO of another major domestic steel producer, headquartered in the same city, who called him to order a new Gulfstream for himself. The Gulfstream rep related that buyer #2 wanted to know exactly what type aircraft my client had bought so that he could order a ‘better’ aircraft. Buyer#2 had said “I’ve got to make sure that I have a bigger and better airplane than Joe (my client) has because it wouldn’t look good for him to have a nicer airplane than I have.”

In addition to the obvious monetary value of high salaries and perks, it seems that it is very important to “one up” other executives regardless of the economic performance of the organization. What an expensive and, in my view, inappropriate cost for ‘ego gratification’.
 
It is my hope that those who occupy leadership positions in both business and union organizations will align their personal priorities as discussed above. Until leaders demonstrate in all their actions and behaviors these priorities, I’m convinced we ‘can’t get there from here’.