"Success is on the far side of failure." ~Thomas Watson Sr.
Does the title above accurately describe your professional style? Or that of your Team? Your Organization?
Why not?
Much has been written and refreshed recently regarding the unfortunate passing of the iconic Steve Jobs. Does your own leadership experience and outlook embrace the passion for your Organization's mission that was evident as Steve Jobs spoke to those 2005 Stanford graduates? Do YOU fondly recall your own failings with the same enthusiasm that Steve Jobs exuded when describing his ouster from Apple ten years after its founding?
Are you failing enough? Are you encouraging your Team's members to fail more often?
The financial services industry continues to evolve at breakneck speed. Online bill payment, account aggregation, bank-to-bank online transfers are now "old" technologies. Single location institutions have launched mobile banking. As soon as your Public Relations Team can push a piece out to PRNewswire, a dozen other competitors or peers simultaneously issue similar independent press releases.
Despite infinite media attention and blogs devoted to the "rise of regulation amidst Dodd-Frank" and all of the other horror stories about "new fees" that abound, a select few of your competitors are conceiving, testing, retooling, retesting and preparing to launch tomorrow's customer-friendly product or service. What are YOU doing to lead your Organization to the front of that cadre? Is your Board of Directors inspired...or mired in risk aversion?
Every merger has an acquirer and an acquired (regardless of how the Communications Team attempts to portray it). Yesterday's mergers were often about growing the footprint, expanding the brand to new markets, leveraging complementary channels for optimizing profits and controlling redundant costs.
Is your Organization untamed? Are you confident enough in your professional Team to accord them a percentage of their time to be unruly enough to identify, develop and launch the products and services that will satisfy tomorrow's customers/members?
Your Organization, under your leadership, will either be the acquirer--or the acquired--in tomorrow's merger. You will either be seeking to acquire an institution through which your Organization can channel its innovative products, services and servant leaders to WOW! new customers/members...or you will be explaining to your employees why many of them will need to seek employment elsewhere?
YOU are the Leader that everyone in your Organization is looking up to.
Are you the Leader that everyone in your Industry is looking up to and attempting to emulate?
If not, then perhaps it's time you moved out of the way to allow that Leader to emerge...that Leader who will ensure that your Organization and each of its fully-invested Teams becomes and remains: UNSTOPPABLE!
