Are you trying to implement or perpetuate a lean initiative? If you are, I can tell you with certainty that you will not succeed without great leadership. It will take great leadership to guide your company through the minefields of change.
By leadership, I do not mean management. By leadership, I mean that all-too-rare combination of abounding initiative coupled with the ability to create a vision, the ability to sell that vision and the ability to motivate the personnel to execute that vision.
True leaders have a rare combination of personal traits that include a strong personality balanced with their own sense of fallibility.
They have tremendous courage, yet are very humble.
They have an innate ability to act, yet are introspective and listen to a wide range of persons before they act.
These traits and more are required so leaders can respond both to the changing external environment and the changing internal environment.
In a phrase: To be successful, your leadership must be responsible.
In the short-term, it is often difficult to tell if your leadership is really successful -- if it is guiding the ship in the correct direction. External environmental conditions sometimes make it very easy to be profitable.
In these times it is hard to tell if the company is doing well because of the leadership or in spite of the leadership. The greatest tests of leadership are exhibited when the leadership must guide the company in times of peril and crises.
