I recently had the opportunity to attend the ASHP Leadership Conference in Chicago. This is an annual event; I have been going now for over 5 years.
Part of what attracted me to this year's meeting was the recognition of Toby Clark via the John W. Webb Lecture Award. Toby is one of my mentors; were it not for him, I would likely not be as involved in ASHP matters as I am. To this day he motivates me as a professional and it was great to see his leadership recognized.
In his web lecture, Toby urged us to be bold. His second slide read "The greatest leadership sin is to remain passive in the face of challenges." He further pointed out that leadership requires us to develop and support a philosophy, to replace fear with hope, replace disbelief with trust, energize those we lead, and continually learn.
It wasn't only Toby. Lloyd Baird urged us to be entreprenurial in our leadership, to avoid the trap of refining the past. He described the problem as "We assume the past is the prologue to the future. We recognize the tremendous changes of the past because we have in some sense lived them. We are even prepared for changes in the future which extends what we have seen. We are [therefore] totally unprepared for the massive, unrelenting quantum changes we face. Our assumptions about what it takes to lead the enterprise are often based in past, not future realities."
He gave us four rules for being entrepreneurial leaders:
- Catch the weak signals - a friend of mine likes to quote Wayne Gretski who described his success in hockey as being able to "... skate where the puck is going to be..." Stan Gryskiewicz describes similar attributes in his book Positive Turbulence where he identifies 'watching the edges' as a strategy for 'catching the weak signals' that really drive innovation. Note that Stan runs the Center for Creative Leadership where he likes to involve creative people from the art world to help scientists and leaders understand life from a creative point of view. The 'weak signals' are those indications that are just starting to appear that show us where our world is really likely to go.
- Have a vision: Paint the picture - as much as we like to be data-driven, we are compelled by images. Another friend of mine in our industry once told me, "People don't buy what they need; they buy what they want!" In my 20+ years in the informatics industry, I can tell you that is true. If people really want something, they will seek out what it takes to achieve that desire. So entrepreneurial leadership is about creating a vision people will continue to pursue when times get tough.
- Continually learn - for us, this translates to "be willing to learn that the previous course requires correction". To quote Lloyd "Ever interaction, every project, every customer is a chance to learn." Learning is one way we 'catch the weak signals'.
- Build a network - and use it! The important thing here is that the entrepreneurial leader cannot do things on their own; they need an eclectic network of individuals to help them achieve and innovate.
- Absolute integrity and accountability:
- Stewardship and Responsibility
- See clearly
- Speak the truth
- Deal justly
Obvioiusly there is more here than a single blog can contain. I could spend a blog on each of th bullet points under #5 alone. What I want to convey here is that this last Leadership Conference contained several pearls of which I have only described two. If you can, go on the web site, look at the materials, and , hopefully, find the same level of inspiration that I did.
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