Be the GOAT Boss!

 Different times call for different skills. The same leader who heralds dramatic and disruptive  change is not the same leader who keeps their crew growing, learning and trying to do new stuff happily in their jobs year after year. 

The great leader who has their own ingenious  plan is not the same leader whose mission-driven team builds new options and implements plans effectively year in and year out. 

Leaders vary in their insight, analysis, communication and management skills.

They vary in their facilitation skills, and in their manipulation skills. The great sales person, the great financial analyst, the great people-builder, the great care giver, the great beaurocrat, the great careerist, the great comnunicator, the great fixer are generally not the same person despite what they may have you believe.

And yet these different personalities may wind up with the same leadership job. A job they are not usually qualified for. 

And so, if they are great, they are great students. And they will take any new ideas where they can find them, even from you. 

In any promotion that person is doing something they haven't done before, if they understand the job correctly. 

The great personality may be the great leader. Or the one without much personality at all. 

The great leader may be the business relationship builder without operational skills.

But after four decades in healthcare consulting I would say this. The best leader is honest, willing to learn, even from you, and treats you as a leader in your own right, as a peer. They bring everyone along, and are willing to fall on their sword doing so. They have figured out what you do best and have done so successfully, and so you succeed. And your failure is also theirs.

 They get you what you need, the help you need, more often than tell you what they need because they already know you know what you are doing. So your success is theirs.

They mark their success by yours. They watch errors evaporate, morale skyrocket and the margin soar as the work of other people.

They don't just promote a few. They "promote" everyone working for them.

And so their people work late, work weekends, take work home, bring back proposals, prototypes, manuals, guides, designs, policies in pure joy that they put together on their own time when no one asked for it, and don't let problems go until they are truly solved. 

Why? Not because anyone told them to directly or indirectly, formally or informally. 

They do it because their boss is doing everything possible to help. Because their boss is interested in them, likes all of them. And so what the boss needs to do every employee is passionate to do each in their own way. And they know the  boss isn't territorial, takes feedback like a champ and loves different solutions. 

They are on the same team. Internal competition is eliminated in favor of complete focus, alignment and teamwork. 

That's a great leader. That's a boss who is a GOAT Boss. 

Be that boss.

The Quiet Art of True Productivity

A productive-focused mind works best on its own deadlines. The over-the-top excessive / destructive stress is anything added to that. And yet newer managers, and those older ones who have learned little, believe that imposing ever tighter deadlines and pushing employees for ever greater production is in fact the job of management. They take pride in such injuries to solid work. It takes a bit of maturity to understand that the toughest task master is buried deep within each of us. And the great manager helps us develop a healthy relationship with that inner task master, while eliminating all external barriers and inefficiencies.

This truth has been recognized for centuries. In The Wealth of Nations (1776), Adam Smith observed:

> “This great increase of the quantity of work which, in consequence of the division of labour, the same number of people are capable of performing, is owing to three different circumstances; first, to the increase of dexterity in every particular workman; secondly, to the saving of the time which is commonly lost in passing from one species of work to another; and, lastly, to the invention of a great number of machines which facilitate and abridge labour, and enable one man to do the work of many.”

—Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, Book I, Chapter 1

Smith’s core idea: Productivity grows not from harder pushing, but from better organization, specialization, and the intelligent use of tools.

Nearly two centuries later, W. Edwards Deming distilled the same insight into modern management terms:

> “Eighty-five percent of the reasons for failure are deficiencies in the systems and process rather than the employee. The role of management is to change the process rather than badgering individuals to do better.”

—W. Edwards Deming, quoted in Out of the Crisis (1986)

Deming’s core idea: The manager’s role is to improve systems so people can excel, not to intensify pressure on individuals.

Together, these perspectives form a single, timeless principle: effective managers amplify what people can do by designing environments where their natural drive can flourish unimpeded. The best leaders make performance and progress  visible, and remove friction, waste, and fear—trusting that, when the path is clear, the “inner task master” each of us carries will take care of the rest.

This is not only how sustainable change is produced, but also how great organizations are built. 

And time and history have proven the truth of this over and over again.

Take any two managers each with the same number of employees. In the course of a year one of these managers, without having pushed the hands that work under them at all, will have produced much more work, better results, sustainably, reliably, of higher quality, with greater patient satisfaction, higher morale and retention than the other.