We’ve all encountered them: the chronic challenger. They don’t like this or that. Or maybe they do like this but don’t like that. They cause us angst because they don’t go with the flow and we can’t imagine how anything they say can be of benefit. We wonder why they have such a bad attitude all the time. 

You may think you understand  the chronic challenger type but you might actually be missing something. Chronic challengers have passion and seek a better way. When they complain their intent is not to sabotage your strategy or  immediate plans, they just see things differently. Their views are not those of the conformist and they aren’t inclined to go with group thinking. 

Finding Value in the Chronic Challenger

As a leader your job is to find the golden nugget of validity in what challengers are saying as every message has some truth. Think about our major societal issues: gun control, abortion, sexuality, and social programs – they are very polarizing. But, each side has some points that are valid or carry some weight. You don’t have to agree with the entire message; you just need to understand the golden nugget of validity. 

No position, decision, process, or strategy is without its imperfections. If you adopt this mindset,  you can gain value from the chronic challenger. Their perspective has insight that can season your thinking and let you know how solid the ground is you are standing on. 

To practice finding value in a challenger’s message, try this:

1. Interview someone that thinks differently than you on a major subject.
2. Seek to only understand. Do not try to convince them of your way of thinking.
3. Try and understand their thinking from their point of view without any judgment.

This exercise takes a lot of effort and discipline but it will reveal information you previously never thought about. 

Dealing with the Chronic Challenger

Another thing to consider regarding chronic challengers is how leaders tend to discount their character, thus destroying the credibility of anything they say. This allows leaders to not take anything the challenger brings up seriously. This may make the leader’s job easier but here again it isolates them from different perspectives. 

Think about who you have discounted personally because of their frequent opposition. Can you remember saying to yourself “I’m not going to listen to Bob. He’s the one who uses up his vacation in the first half of the year and never has any for the holiday season”; “Why are you telling me this Susan? Blah, blah, blah. Everyone thinks you talk too much. Tell it to someone who cares.”

So how do you deal with a chronic challenger?  Recognize, from their perspective, that a portion of their view is valid. You don’t have to always change your thinking based on what they say but you do have to listen to them and understand their perspective. If you do this you have earned the right to have them listen and understand your perspective in return. Eventually the challenger will either back off or you will change your position. 

When the Chronic Challenger Stops Challenging

What happens if a chronic challenger goes quiet? Take notice and be alarmed, it’s not a victory. It means they have given up caring. They have been worn down and have decided to just go with the flow and will no longer give you a different perspective.  This is a true loss. Talk with your challenger and see if you can get them to care again. 

As a leader, being right is not as important as being aware. It’s kind of funny; the more aware you are the greater chance you have of being right. If you want the best for your organization or project put the time and energy into listening to your chronic challenger.

Because of their ways, this type of team member receives a lot of judgment. “They’re lazy; they don’t care; they’re liars; they can’t be counted on.” No matter what the exact words are the judgment is always negative – “they need to change and that’s that.”

OK, now that that’s out of our system let’s take a look at the problem from a different perspective by stepping into the world of human dynamics and discussing how people interact with the world at hand. Myers Briggs tells us people are either (Judging) or P (Perceiving). For our purposes we’ll forget about the specific words that go along with these personality types and focus on the behaviors they describe. “J” personalities prefer structure, plans, and achieving closure. “P” personalities prefer flexibility, spontaneity, and keeping their options open. Roughly one-third of the US are “P”s and two-thirds are “J”’s.

When it comes to completing work “J” personalities like closure and “P”s don’t. “J”s find it easy to keep their attention level high on tasks, making sure all the details are completed. They are the ones that send you a thank you note after you sent them a thank you. But, because they like closure they struggle with flexibility, spontaneity, and leaving things unresolved. 

“P” personalities lose interest when the core of a task is finished and then move on to the next thing. They are the ones who take the trash out from under the sink when asked but leave it sitting next to the trash can instead of in it. But, because of their nature they handle change well and can operate in an environment where they need to fly by the seat of their pants.

Both “J” and “P” personalities act from the core of who they are but in different ways. They can’t drastically change who they are because they are who they are. This provides a greater perspective of why “P”s don’t always completely finish their work before they say they are finished. It’s not because they don’t care, are lazy, or are liars, it’s because they have a “P” personality.

If you are managing a “P” personality then you have to manage them differently than you would a “J” personality. “P”s need to know exactly what has to be accomplished for a task to be completed. Sometimes these details have to be documented for them to refer to later, such as a checklist for when they say they are done. These are called coping mechanisms. They help “P”s deal with the task-driven world they normally would not do well in.

This may seem like extra work for a manager. But, the benefits “P” personalities contribute to a team because of their flexibility and spontaneity outweigh this extra effort. If we were only surrounded by “J” personalities we would have glaring weaknesses. Having people on our team with different strengths is a plus even though at times it can be frustrating.

The primary reason of sabotage is due to our resistance to being vulnerable.  When we are vulnerable we are transparent and truthful about our plight. There is no doubt that we are down and in need. People can clearly see it and empathize with our predicament.

However, most of us fight to hide our need; feeling we will be seen as weak if we do. It is very humbling to be truly vulnerable because we put ourselves in the position of being ridiculed and judged a failure; or, so we think. The reality is, the more vulnerable we are the more others will come to our aid. If we minimize or hide our need in an attempt to not look bad it stirs up the predator spirit in others and motivates them to reveal just how bad off we really are. When the need is finally uncovered it is never followed by a desire to help. It ends at the discovery.

If we are vulnerable and bear our souls we end up receiving mercy and assistance. Very few people can ignore someone in need when they are truly vulnerable. The only reason someone will ignore those in need  is if they are habitually in need and seem to be continuing the same actions or behavior that causes them to be in need.

The next time you find yourself in desperate situation and realize the only way you can get out if it is with help from others do the following:

• Find a person to support you. They should not be the ones who can help you get out of you predicament but can help you move through the process of getting help from the right person(s).
• Totally embrace your situation. Strip away every bit of denial and clearly acknowledge your plight. Do not identify excuses or place blame on anyone. If it is true you should point out your mistakes that contributed to your situation. Identify the points of pain and the most likely sources of help.
• Meet with those sources of help and be as truthful and venerable as you can be. Paint the picture of your situation so clearly that they have no choice but to empathize with you. Have a humble demeanor and recognize that they have a choice to help you. Then ask for help.

Following this advice may be the hardest, most and humiliating experience of your life; but, it will be better than not getting the help you need and having to endure the circumstances.

Meetings in of themselves are not a bad thing. They are an effective tool because they provide a rich medium for communicating information. There is nothing like a face-to-face setting, be it one-on-one or in large groups, for conveying to attendees all the substance and emotion related to a topic. Meetings are also an efficient means for interacting, collaborating, and reaching consensus. The bantering back and forth between participants deepens their understanding of the topic making way for shared understanding and future action.

So when does such an effective tool get hijacked and become a burden to individuals and organizations? There is no one data point that can tell you this, but there are three specific trends that can be observed to give you a hunch.

1. Who is initiating the meetings?
2. Are the majority of meetings held one-on-one or with more than two people?
3. What is the primary purpose of the meetings? (Providing status, resolving issues, obtaining approval, validating or giving feedback on actions, etc.)

If you watch these three trends closely you will notice two types of individuals initiating most of the meetings: those who want to make all the decisions and those who don’t like to make any decisions. These are the culprits who drive the meeting count up in organizations. Let’s look at them closer.

Decision Makers
Individuals who want to make all the decisions don’t trust others to make a decision as well as they can. They also don’t trust others to do a job as well as they can. As a result, they are very uncomfortable with giving others autonomy.  They are driven to be in the know about everything and not letting anything proceed in a direction other than where they want it to go. For them, meetings are an efficient means for obtaining information and controlling the decisions and actions of others. Most of their meetings are one-on-one with their subordinates. The second largest group of meetings is one-on-one with their peers.

Non-Decision Makers
Individuals who don’t like making decisions are the polar opposite. They don’t trust their ability to make a decision or do a job as well as others can. They are very uncomfortable with any sort of autonomy. They seek security in numbers, abdicating their responsibility and accountability, trying to distribute it to others. Meetings are an efficient means for them to allow others to make their decisions and validate their actions. The majority of their meetings are with their peers and management.

Organizational culture can play a big role in the abusive use of meetings too. People who would not normally exhibit the above characteristics can be heavily influenced by an organization’s culture.  Cultures that reward individual heroism and value it more than team results bring out the controlling nature in people. Also, cultures that publicly crucify individuals who make mistakes cause people to seek safety and avoid getting in harm’s way.

The only people who can change culture and individual behavior are organizational leaders. If the culture is contributing to too many meetings they must work on changing it. If the culture is neutral and only a few individuals are abusing meetings leaders can correct the behavior of the individuals. They need to tell controlling employees to stop having status meetings and rely more on email or reports. They need to tell the scared employees to stop bugging people with meetings and make decisions on their own.

Organizational leaders can also shock the system by not allowing meetings for extended periods of time. This allows people who normally have to attend meetings to gain some power and rebel against the excessiveness. After the extended period leaders can ask individuals to send in reports of what broke as a result of not being able to have meetings. This can generate a real dose of reality and reset habits.

There is a lot of good that gets accomplished in meetings. This should not be denied. It is only the abusive situations leaders should look to correct. Their goal should be to trade the effort wasted in unnecessary meetings for individual productivity.

Any ideas for what to do with those unused conference rooms?

After many years of work we became masters at our jobs and found ourselves only getting better as we experienced new situations and interacted with our peers.  Now, learning only comes through frequent experiences and reflection with our peers. The experiences are always present as work-life never stands still, yet reflecting on them is both optional and a must for learning. Reflection requires us to stop, review, analyze, and draw conclusions. It’s not extremely hard to do but it takes discipline to step away from day-to-day activities and cycle through the recent experiences to glean some lessons learned.

Organizational leaders have a more difficult learning challenge than others. Their experiences involve the “big picture” perspective and systematic thinking. Feedback on their performance is not immediate or readily available. As a result, their reflection needs more time and seclusion to tweeze out the lessons learned and needed adjustments.

Compounding this problem is the fact that leaders find it very difficult to create this precious time to reflect. Countless daily issues and the stigma that secluded reflection is not real work are the main culprits in this situation. But, given that a leader’s most powerful influence on an organization’s success is making sure they’re heading in the right direction and doing the right things in the future, they certainly have a strong enough reason to create the required time and seclusion to reflect.

Ok, so let’s say you are able to carve out the time and find a secluded place away from disruptions. How can you make sure you get the most out of your time? Follow these simple steps:

1. Review what you have experienced over the last several months and what keeps you up at night. Keep the “big picture” in mind here.
2. Select an issue to ruminate on. This means you have to put some prioritization on your issues and only pick one.
3. List all associated points of data. Don’t allow yourself to interject misinformation or partially validated information.
4. Describe your judgments. Detail what you consider good or bad about the data and what pre-defined positions you’re holding tightly.
5. Identify the root contributors. Look for the systemic influences that are at play.
6. Draw a conclusion. Paint a big picture summary and make some decisions.
7. State the lessons learned. These are the key points you will tuck away in your subconscious to draw upon later in similar scenarios.

After you have gone through this reflection process on several occasions you’ll find yourself craving these times and valuing the benefits you derive. You’ll also learn you can reflect in less secluded environments. Long drives and flights are great times to reflect. Arriving a day early or staying a day late on business trips are prime times for reflection too.

If all experiences were once-in-a-lifetime occurrences then taking time to reflect and learn would be wasteful. But the fact is, history repeats itself and many of our experiences return in new situations. Decisions made and actions taken by leaders have large dollar values associated with them. Being able to learn from experiences and perform better in similar future situations can save a company money, and more importantly, your career.

While this comparison may be reasonable it is not really fair. This is because our friend’s and peer’s lives are not just like ours even though it may seem as such on the surface. Under the surface all of us have very different circumstances that need to be considered.

We all have a finite amount of emotional stamina. It aids us in two ways: It keeps us resilient to handle life’s demands and gives us the discipline to chase our desires.

Resilience is needed so we do not become incapacitated by:

• stress of raising a family or work responsibilities
• pain from illness or injury
• loss of a friendship or loved one
• sleep deprivation

Discipline is needed so we can grow by:

• persuing our life goals
• building personal relationships
• dieting to lose weight
• learning something new
• exercising to stay fit
• getting to the bottom of your “to do” list

The emotional energy needed for resilience always takes priority over the energy for discipline. This is a primitive trait instilled in us to ensure our survival. If we have emotional energy left over from maintaining our resilience then we have the option of using it to be disciplined in areas we want to grow in. If all of our emotional energy is used up on resilience we will struggle to be disciplined in anything related to growth. This scenario is almost always never considered when we fail to be disciplined.

Mary found this to be true when she compared herself to her neighbor, Trish. Every morning Mary watched Trish leave her house for a 45 min run. Now and then Mary would beat herself up about how undisciplined she was and vow to start running the next morning. Then the next morning she would wake up early and run. She would stay disciplined for about a week and then return to sleeping in and not running. When Mary would beat herself up she never considered the stress she endured at work as an air traffic controller and that her husband had a bad snoring habit that made getting to sleep very hard. She just thought she should be able to do it because Trish could do it. If she knew more about Trish she would have learned how little stress Trish endured at work as a receptionist and that she went to bed before her husband and got nine hours of sleep a night.

For those who want to have more discipline and growth in their lives, even though they are tapped out on the resilience side of things need to be a little more strategic. Either you can try to be more disciplined and see what sticks or you need to find a way to reduce the amount of energy committed to resilience. This would mean waiting until the stress at work lessens, the grieving from a lost loved one runs its course, or for your bad knee to heal.

Another thing to consider when evaluating our emotional stamina is our capacity. The amount of emotional stamina we have access to varies based on how we use it over time. If we push the limits it grows. If we don’t push the limits it diminishes. For example, those with a lower need for resilience are more susceptible to a reduction in emotional stamina; whereas, those who need all the emotional stamina they can to be resilient, and still take on some discipline, will find their capacity expanding.

That is why in general, young working parents raising kids have much more emotional stamina than singles their own age. Elderly workers have much more than their retired counterparts. Parents with late teen kids, young singles, and retired individuals need to be mindful of their emotional stamina. Because the amount of emotional energy needed for resilience is less in their lives they need to increase the amount of discipline they require of themselves. This will keep their emotional stamina high and ready for when some life event requires more resilience of them.

If you want to be able to stick with things better in the future you need to understand and manage your emotional energy. Don’t be reluctant to give yourself a break when you are in a period of high resilience and push yourself to be more disciplined when you are not. Help others with this too. You will find yourself with less completion and more support when sticking with it.

In the past there were physical boundaries between our work and personal lives that helped keep them separated. The struggle with balance came down to the amount of time spent at each location. Today, technology has removed the physical boundaries and allowed work activities to infiltrate personal time; and, personal activities to infiltrate work time. Computers and PDAs are as central to our lives personally as they are our work.

We all have a disposition towards work and personal activities. You have heard the saying some “live to work” and others “work to live”. There is a continuum between the two views and each of us has our place on it. This disposition is not assigned to us; we choose it. It drives us to choose our profession, employer, and priorities.

The time demands for work and personal activities aren’t consistent from day to day, month to month, or year to year. Our work and personal lives have seasons. At work we have busy and slow times of the year. Projects have critical deadlines that must be met and new phases that give us a little break. The business climate can brings about cuts that require us to do more with less and good times that allows us to pursue new opportunities.

In our personal lives we have significant life events like weddings, the births of loved ones, and times we have to take care of aging parents and go to funerals. Our kids require a different level of support when they are adolescents than they do when the leave the home and live on their own. How we unplug on vacations can be a week crammed with adventure or time sitting quietly on a deck in the mountains.

Also, most employers don’t care if you find a balance. They make it easier to do work activities during personal time, while making it harder to do personal activities during work time. They care only about the seasons of work, not the personal ones.

With all of this thrown into the pot you can see how impossible it is to balance our work and personal lives. A better goal is to pursue an ebb and flow between the two. At any one time the mix between work and personal activities can be significantly out of whack, but a point in time needs to be visible when things will swing the other way.

It requires discipline and an understanding of what the consequences are for letting your disposition towards work and personal activities lead all the time. Those who “live to work” struggle to keep work in check and tend to not take enough time for their family, friends, and selves. Those who “work to live” struggle to meet the challenge of work activities and end up with less rewards and opportunities than co-workers.

It also requires paying attention to the signals around you. If you have been paying attention to work activities for too long you will start to dislike what you do and those close to you will let you know you have been absent. If you have been paying attention too long to personal activities your supervisor will let you know and you’ll become disgruntled with your employers view of your performance.

There is no silver bullet to feeling good about the mix of time you engage in work and personal activities. But, at least you now understand what  forces are at play putting you in this uncomfortable predicament. You are the only one who can change it. Thankfully you know that the seasons will change and you can choose a time in the future to be different.

The way people engage you in the workplace is based on their perception of your intentionality. People working in organizations with unintentional leaders are cynical about why their leaders want something done. Closure is not valued in the organization and the work quality suffers as a result. Negativity and avoidance dominate the work environment.

On the flip side, intentional leaders have a lot of credibility related to “why” they want something done and if it is worth doing. Work in this type of organization is completed as requested and its intended results are apparent. The work environment is positive and engaging.

Intentionality is all about time and effort. It means learning what you need to know to plot a good course, make a decision, or take action. It also means being aware of the volume and pace of work within your organizations related to other priorities, staying the course, and seeing things to the end.

Being intentional is not a true/false thing; it’s a continuum. Your intentionality varies as your behavior varies during different efforts, such as:

It is far easier for a leader to be intentional on requests with their employees because it only involves days to initiate, monitor, and complete them. There is minimal time and effort involved. Being intentional in strategy, however, is a lot harder as the amount of time and effort to learn what you need to know to plot a good course, be aware of the volume and pace of work, and stay the course is far greater. So, a leader can be more intentional when the time-frames are smaller and end up being less so when they are longer.

As was stated earlier, the best way to identify how intentional you are as a leader is to observe how employees engage you related to work. Let’s look at each context time frames and the signs your employees may give you to indicate whether or not you are being perceived as intentional.

Requests

Not intentional: The more time employees put between your request and its fulfillment the greater chance you will forget about it. They may say when you remind them of the request that they were just about to do it but in reality they will avoid you until you forget about it.

Intentional: Employees either complete the request or tell you they will get it done by a certain date without you having to remind them.

Projects

Not intentional: Project delays are measured in half-life’s, like radioactive materials. The end deliverables are completed haphazardly without attention to detail. Employees just want to close the project out and move on to anything else.

Intentional: Regular status is delivered by employees and reviewed together. There is a lot of attention paid to the end deliverable to make sure it hits the mark.

Initiatives

Not intentional: Initiatives are like gases. In the right environment they take on a liquid form that employees can grasp, but without attention they become vapor and vanish into the air, never to be seen or heard from again. Employees show excitement in the beginning but wonder off when attention isn’t paid anymore.

Intentional: No matter how long the initiative lasts, employees can clearly articulate the future state and its benefit to the organization. Employees enjoy looking back and seeing the transformation and evolution of their collective efforts.

Strategies

Not intentional: These do not exist and are never discussed by employees within the organization. Work life is a series of non-related events that must be carried out without a higher purpose.

Intentional: It is hard for employees to totally connect with a strategy. It may be too broad or sophisticated, but when it is brought up by the leader time and time again, employees slowly start to connect with it.

It takes focus, discipline, and dedication to be intentional. Not everyone has these traits, and as a result, struggles to be intentional. If you are in this situation, try partnering with a peer in your company and leverage their strengths in these areas to help you compensate for your weaknesses. It does not need to be on a day-to-day basis; monthly can help a whole bunch. Also, avoid getting too busy and overwhelmed; it is a natural predator to intentionality.

If you are feeling risky and ready for some straight feedback, create an assessment out of the above text and ask your employees to rate you on a scale for each time frame. The feedback may hurt a little but your employees will be glad you asked and ready to support you more in the future.

Statistics will tell you that some of the team members will be great performers, several good, and a few will be poor. That may be reliable news bit it doesn’t really matter when it comes to adopting a new team. It’s not as simple as replacing all poor performers. Not all better than average employees are a good fit for all managers and not all managers are a good fit for all better than average employees. When there is a change in management it’s not necessarily the responsibility of the manager to adjust to the employees even if the majority of them think he or she should. Sometimes managers need to replace top performers to make the team their own.

This is exactly what Dennis had to do when he was hired to replace the previous manager of a software development organization. The organization had a history of good performance and had a number of top performers, but was not embracing cutting edge industry practices. Dennis was specifically hired to get the organization to adopt these practices and take it to the next level.

Dennis had a ton of experience managing organizations and was a thought leader in the industry. His management style was well suited to changing organizations and producing results. After six months on the job several top performers confronted Dennis about his style and the changes he was initiating. They told him he needed to change if he wanted them to stay. Dennis told them he didn’t think it was working between them either and it wasn’t anything personal; it just was not a good fit between them and him. Dennis offered them packages to leave and they did. Because Dennis was a thought leader in the industry he was able to recruit other top performers to his organization. Dennis commented a year later that his new employees were not any better than the ones that left but the new employees did enable the organization wide transformation Dennis needed to be successful.

Even after you replace all the people you needed to initially, you still won’t have a final team. In fact, you never will. People change over time and so do job responsibilities. Nothing is static. Where there once was a perfect match between an employee and their job responsibility things can get out of sync when new skills are needed due to technology advancements, schedule flexibility can disappear when an employee’s family changes, and job responsibilities can diminish as processes are streamlined.

This means employees need to be constantly evaluated, especially long standing ones, to see if they still fit culturally and are producing the value they are being compensated for. As soon as the trajectory of an employee’s value contribution begins to flatten out and the trend of their compensation continues to climb, tough conversations need to take place. Also, it’s worth the chance to look at trading up on marginal performers. Usually a lot of frogs have to be kissed to find the prince and as you know, each iteration takes a substantial amount of time and effort. Yes, it causes disruption but it also makes sure your team does not get complacent or stale. It’s the manager’s responsibility to set the pace and tone at work even if it makes them uncomfortable.

Finding replacements for your team or hiring in a time of growth is no simple task. Managers never want just a warm body to fill a position; they want a top performer. They can identify who they think is a top performer but having that prediction come to pass is a different thing. Here again you may have to kiss several frogs to find the right person. It can be a hard process to stay engaged in, but is a must if you want to end up with top performers.

Managing your team of unique individuals is a huge responsibility but a crucial one. They are the ones who ultimately produce your organizations value. Getting the best team together is good for everyone no matter how hard it is or long it takes. It’s a living organism that needs to be pruned to grow.

In companies, providing a sense of purpose is the best motivator. The purpose can come from what a product or service provides to customers and the benefit derived from it. Purpose can also come from the positive change or end result a project will produce when completed. These are great motivators to employees and drive them to be the best they can be.

However, even these items aren’t a guarantee when it comes to providing employees a sense of purpose. In large companies, the products, services, and customers can be very distant. They can be several times removed, which significantly reduces their impact on an employees’ sense of purpose. Projects are also limited as they do not always have a compelling purpose and are temporal, not lasting forever.

There is one sure fire way to provide all employees a long term sense of purpose. You can do so by identifying all the ways your organization provides value to your customers, defining each employee’s link in the value chain, and promoting each individual’s contribution to the value chain. This value chain is ever present and requires contributions from every employee in the organization to be successful. If an employee can’t connect to this value chain maybe they shouldn’t be in the organization. Also, it doesn’t matter if the customer is the ultimate external customer or an internal customer.

Let’s look at the details of making this happen:

• Identify all the ways your organization provides value to your customers. There a many ways and means by which your organization touches your customer: the products and services you provide them, interactions you have with them, and all the different ways they observe your organization. Each of these touch points are an opportunity for your organization to provide value. During this process you may identify other places where you should be adding value and current things you should stop doing.
• Define each employee’s link in the value chain. Each link in the value chain is a role performed by one of more employees. There can be many employees who contribute to the value chain through one role and there can be one employee who contributes to the value chain through many roles. For each role, define the link by giving it a short one sentence description. The description needs to be in the context of the value your organization provides its customers. For instance, instead of the description “Answers phones” use “connects people with people”. Make it meaningful in the context of value. Then list the high level responsibilities of that role and list future opportunities for increasing that role’s value contribution. Lastly, indicate if it is a direct or support role. Direct roles deal with the customer directly and support roles aid someone within your organizations so they can better connect with the customer directly.
• Promote each individual’s contribution to the value chain. Nothing beats the consistency of messaging to ingrain a way of thinking into someone’s day-to-day work life. Leaders need to perpetually refer to the value their organization provides and each individual’s contribution to it. This practice will establish within each employee the purpose and motivation to be the best they can be.

Some of you are thinking this is a gimmick and that you can derive your own sense of purpose, motivating yourself to greater achievement. Great! That’s you. If you are a leader you can’t afford to rely on each individual to come up with their own purpose because if it doesn’t work you’ll be left with an under-performing organization that you judge to be full of bad eggs. In the end, however, others will judge you as the under-performer for your lack of leadership. Seek and follow the value chain; it will lead to success.