CAN BUSINESS LEADERS LEARN ANYTHING FROM THE AFGHAN TRAGEDY?

Stanley S. Labovitz.. Author, CEO, SurveyTelligence- Expert in business and leadership transformation, helping executive to outperform their goals – Improving business performance through technology:

CAN BUSINESS LEADERS LEARN ANYTHING FROM THE AFGHAN TRAGEDY?

Just listening to CNN, failures of Afghanistan has been deemed a leadership failure. I suspect that’s true, but are there lessons to be learned?

LESSON 1-BUREAUCRACY: CNN discussed the delays causing by issuing Visas to Afghans trying to flee anticipated death. WOW…When the bureaucracy, or culture, is so stale or regimented, that moving people to respond, it becomes very costly, injures the clients, becomes very difficult to implement, or creates delay, that’s inexcusable. Is that what’s meant by agility?

LESSON 2-INTELLIGENCE: Without having “situational awareness” of what’s happening around you each day, the left hand will never be able to align with the right hand.

LESSON 3- PREDICTABILITY: Without a solid, agreed upon, unified vision or values, accompanied with “situational awareness”, you can never really predict the future.

LESSON 4-LEADERSHIP: Great leaders vs. successful leaders. For 20 years, 4 great leaders managed the Afghan war, and none were successful. If being great leadership is not the answer to being a successful leader… what is?

LESSON 5- MISALIGNMENT AT LEADERSHIP LEVEL: US leaders and executive teams were not on the same page; US and Afghan leaders not on the same page; Afghan leaders and executive team not on the same page.

LESSON 6-CULTURE OF TRIBES: When an organization is made up of tribes, which are not united to the greater vision and values, it seems people will simply lay down their guns, abandon their nation and families.

LESSON 7- FINGERPOINTING: When a collapse happens, finger pointing will unravel the business culture beyond repair, preventing collaboration for the future.

LESSON 8-TRANSPARANCY: Better to be transparent but move forward, rather than finger point or hide behind self-preservation