My Top 3 Leadership Focuses for Great Teams

Next week most of our leadership team (people managers) come together to discuss closing the year and plans for 2024-2025. The heart of that discussion will be leading and the 3 most important leadership focuses for great teams: people, purpose and culture.

I thought to share my perspective on each in this article.

The first, and most important focus for a leader (in my opinion) is people. Success starts with people. A successful leader must be able to attract, develop and performance manage talent. All are equally important.

The last one is also the most common and debilitating weakness I see in leaders; the inability to make the hard decision and move quickly to remove low performing or toxic team members (which kills teams).

Next is having a clearly defined purpose that motivates team members. A paycheck is important to a point. After that teams need to be motivated by meaningful work. At 凯易讯 our purpose of helping broadband service providers, of all sizes, transform the communities they serve – in a meaningful way through education, vibrant local business, protecting children, and empowering the local government - is hugely motivating. I feel it personally and hear it from our team members every day.

Andrew Palmer did a great job of exploring the power of team member motivation in The Economist article How Not to Motivate Employees.

He accurately discusses McGregor’s seminal work on the topic of motivation and corporate purpose via the Theory X and Y management styles. Podcast here.

(As an aside, The Economist along with Harvard Business Review and WSJ via Apple News+ are my top recommendations for daily business reading)

The opening of the article is a good laugh (We have all been there):

Here are some handy rules of thumb. Anyone who calls themselves a thought leader is to be avoided. A man who does not wear socks cannot be trusted. And a company that holds an employee-appreciation day does not appreciate its employees.

Third is culture (In my view purpose and culture go hand-in-hand) which I submit is frequently misunderstood. I believe the tenets of a strong work culture are:

1.???? Acceptance that a culture is not immutable. The notion of “we must protect the culture” or “we are changing and will lose our culture” is wrong. Culture’s only constant should be change as the world is a changing place.

At Calix our theme is “better, better, never best”. There is nothing to protect, only something to improve - daily.

2.???? Everyone is accountable for culture – no bystanders allowed. This is a big one as bystanders love to criticize a culture without stepping up and making a difference. It is not a leadership task – it is an everyone task.

If a team member says the culture is bad, then they need to look in the mirror because they are admitting that they are bad as their actions (or inaction) define the culture.

Culture is how we - at all levels - act toward the people around us; fellow teammates, customers, and partners. Treat everyone with understanding, respect, pushing for a great debate, embracing conflict as a tool for improvement (Lack of conflict is apathy) – and it enables a great culture. Alternatively, be a jerk, ignore the needs of others, act like a victim saying things are "out of your control", make anonymous attacking comments instead of having the courage to act, do not care about customers or team members, be selfish – bad culture.

I have seen this truth play out in the following scenario many times. On one day we are part of an incredible, collaborative team which everyone describes as a “great culture” .. then something changes. Most commonly - a new leader or team member arrives who is arrogant, self-centered, toxic, and instantly the team culture goes from amazing to horrible.

I found it fascinating to watch this view of culture recently play out in the news at OpenAI . The people, who's actions make up the culture, rose up because they valued Sam Altman as one of their own – an important leader within their purpose, culture and team.

They cared and did something about it.

OpenAI will be very interesting case study as they analyze the “weirdness”. Another good analysis by the Economist: The fallout from the weirdness at OpenAI

https://www.economist.com/leaders/2023/11/22/the-fallout-from-the-weirdness-at-openai ).

What happens to Ilya Sutskever will also be interesting. He is a cofounder and from what I have read he sided with the board, then sided with the ~700 who threatened to go to 微软 (What a coup that would have been for MS). From the outside it looks a lot like adopting the leadership stance of whoever is in power .. which is not leadership (or trustworthy).

These 3 will be the focus of our leadership meeting: people, purpose and culture. Get those right .. and the future remains bright.

We are just getting started.

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