Three years ago I accompanied my wife to the EdTEch conference in Chicago, one of the largest instructional technology conferences in the United States. We both went to different sessions that we thought could provide professional learning and growth. One of the afternoons while my wife was in a late afternoon training, my daughter and I went to see the ports where Chicago touched Lake Michigan, which is one of the largest group of freshwater lakes in the world. One of the signs at Lake Michigan presented facts about the number of ships that have sunk and some that are still sitting at the bottom of Lake Michigan and the Great Lakes. I later saw a YouTube video of a ship actually being sunk on the lake to dispose of it and render it completely out of service. I thought to myself that we can learn a lot from watching ships sink that's very applicable to leadership and life.
Over 97 percent of the Earth's water can be found in the oceans. According to the U.S. Geological Survey,
there are over 332,519,000 cubic miles of water on the planet. Of
this vast volume of water, NOAA's National Geophysical Data Center estimates that's
enough water to fill about 352,670,000,000,000,000,000 gallon-sized milk
containers! While that’s more water than
we can possibly fathom, no amount of water in any of the oceans on the outside
of the ship sinks a ship. Ships don’t
sink because of the water around them. They sink because of the water that gets
in them. It’s the same with organizations and leadership. The greatest advertisement for any organization comes from those within the organization, the best endorsement and
evaluation for any leader comes from those closest to them, and those within
the organization are the most influential in creating the perception of success
or failure of an organization.
Under Genghis Khan,
the Mongols would catapult the dead bodies of soldiers infected by the bubonic
plague over city walls during sieges. This is one of the earliest
accounts biological warfare. A fortified city or structure was safe as
long as the disease was on the outside and didn’t get to the inside. However, disease inside of the fort was
deadly and spread to infect so many that the fort couldn’t survive. In 1346, during the siege of Caffa, the
attacking Tartar Forces (subjugated by the Mongol empire under Genghis Khan), used the bodies of Mongol
warriors of the Golden Horde who had died of plague, as weapons. Disease outside of the Caffa didn’t have any
impact, but once it got within it was the beginning of the end. Many historians, suggested the soldiers of
Caffa should’ve catapulted the diseased bodies out immediately and limited
exposure to disease as well as sending it within the attacking force. Leaders have known since the beginning of
time how deadly and dangerous disease within an organization can be. It’s probably a good thing for many people
that the violent nature of punishment for treason has changed since medieval
times when traitors were beaten, hung, beheaded, and quartered (body cut into
four parts and sent to different parts of the empire to display so everyone
would fear punishment for that offense).
In The Art of War, Sun Tzu said “If you know the enemy and know
yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know
yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a
defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every
battle.” Many times, the
challenges/obstacles and also the positive recognitions are created by people
within an organization and closest to leadership. These are often communicated from those
within to those outside of the organization.
People outside of the organization accept this information as truth or
fact because they believe those within a building know what goes on better than
anyone else. There are times when we face
challenges from the outside that we can’t control coming at us, but these
should not be created by people within an organization. People within the organization that create
challenges and undermine either leadership or the mission of the organization
are toxic and impede an organization from improvement.
Ultimately, the most important job anyone within an organization has is to make their boss or supervisor look good. We do this by serving our customers effectively, fulfilling the mission of the team, being loyal to your teammates and leader, communicating positively to promote the good of the team, and knowing which information is confidential and should be not communicated outside of given circles. Ultimately, the challenges within an organization can break an organization or destroy a leader’s credibility and vision for success more than anything else. I’ve worked for a great superintendent that I’ve learned immensely from and one of the most relevant things I’ve learned is the importance of loyalty and everyone on the team pulling in the same direction together. This reminded me of what I learned from coaching and sports about teams that play together and support each other. As a coach, we made it to the 4th round of the playoffs and one game away from a state championship with a regular season record where we only got in as a final seed by the luck of the draw. How did a team that barely got in the playoffs make it that far and be so successful in almost winning a state championship....because we quit fighting against each other and undercutting each other, instead we finally played together and for each other like a family. It’s hard to row a boat to the finish line when someone isn’t rowing in the same direction as the rest of the team and especially when they row against the leader and team. A leader and team can’t expect to be but so successful when they have to take on their own team members as well as the other team and outside challenges. There’s a great leadership lesson to be learned from watching a ship sink and realizing the water/toxicity inside an organization is far more dangerous than any amount of water or challenges outside of the organization.
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