Bad Marketing: Leadership Lessons from Colin Powell

February 07, 2010

Leadership Lessons from Colin Powell

The "Good" - applying leadership principles to make your team more effective

I know this is loosely related to B2B marketing, but I read a great article about Colin Powell's leadership principles and thought about how I could apply them to my marketing team.

Here are my 5 favorites out of the 18 lessons in the article. You can find the rest at Chally.com.

Being responsible sometimes pisses people off. My thoughts -- You have to make the hard choices because most people won't. You can't procrastinate, treat everyone equally or worry about being nice. Doing that only makes things worse for everyone.
Never neglect details. When everyone's mind is dulled or distracted the leader must be doubly vigilant. My thoughts -- You have to execute the details or the strategy is worthless. Vision alone does not equate to success.
You don't know what you can get away with until you try. My thoughts - In today's hyper competitive market (especially in my space - online marketing) you can't be timid or sit around waiting for approvals. Better to try, fail and learn from it than to do nothing. Of course you need to take measured risks not reckless ones.
If it ain't broke don't fix it is the slogan of the complacent, the arrogant or the scared. My thoughts -- You have to constantly be trying to improve your strategy, tactics, processes and execution because the competitors are not standing still.
Plans don't accomplish anything. Theories of management don't much matter. Endeavors succeed or fail because of the people involved. Only by attracting the best people will you accomplish great deeds. My thoughts -- You have to have the best people to get the best results. And you have to create the right environment for success - that means managing by getting into the trenches, leading by example, rewarding hard work, innovative thinking and creativity while weeding out the poor performers (see number 1 above).