Vince Molinaro - Accountable Leaders

Your success will be accelerated and amplified if there is also an effective organizational response in place. By this, I mean you must go beyond yourself and strive to strengthen the leadership accountability across your entire organization. First, you must work hard to hold others accountable, build an accountable team, and help establish a strong community of leaders across your organization.

Second, as a CEO, senior executive, head of human resources, or board director, you must set the tone of strong leadership accountability for the rest of the organization. You must also put practices in place that will make leadership accountability a business priority in your organization. You must define clear leadership expectations, demonstrate resolve, and do the hard work that sustains momentum. You must also support leaders to act as a community and build a strong leadership culture.

In many ways, this book is part of what I call The Leadership Contract trilogy. The Leadership Contract (3rd ed.) presents the core ideas around leadership accountability. The Leadership Contract Field Guide provides 75 activities that you can use to put those ideas into action within your leadership role. This book explores what you must do as a leader to drive strong leadership accountability at an organizational level. The three books are designed to work together and provide an integrated approach for you to implement in your organization.

Hundreds of organizations around the world have brought the ideas of The Leadership Contract to their leaders. My books and training programs are available in multiple languages. In my travels and discussions with leaders, I’ve seen the positive impact these ideas can have. I’ve seen leaders and teams take their game to a higher level of effectiveness and success. I’ve seen organizations build strong leadership cultures that are inspiring. I have been humbled to see this all happen. I know these ideas can work for you as well.

My sincere hope and wish for you is that you will come away with a clear sense of what you must do to be a truly accountable leader—both at an individual and an organizational level. I encourage you to reach out to me on LinkedIn or visit www.drvincemolinaro.com.

1 1Brian de Haaff, “Only 30 Percent of People Believe Their Teammates Are Committed to Quality Work—Here Is How to Fix That,” Inc., November 21, 2018, https://www.inc.com /brian-de-haaff/only-30-percent-of-people-believe-their-teammates-are-committed-to-quality-work-here-is-how-to-fix-that .html.

2 2“How Corporate Culture Affects the Bottom Line,” Duke Fuqua School of Business, November 12, 2015, https://www.fuqua.duke .edu/duke-fuqua-insights/corporate-culture.

3 3You can read the entire story of my colleague Zinta in Vince Molinaro, The Leadership Contract (3rd ed.) (John Wiley & Sons, 2018).

4 4Jeffrey Pfeffer, Dying for a Paycheck (Harper Collins, 2018).

5 5Vince Molinaro, The Leadership Contract (3rd ed.) (John Wiley & Sons, 2018).

This section of the book has two chapters that explore the context in which you are leading.

Chapter 1: The New Game Begins Before the Old One Ends

This chapter will help you understand the future context for all leaders. We will examine the impact of several critical drivers, including the role of transformative technologies, geopolitical instability, revolutionizing work, the need to deliver on diversity, and repurposing the role of corporations in society.

Chapter 2: Why Do We Not Have Better Leadership?

This chapter examines why leadership is not as strong as it needs to be. Specifically, it examines how many leaders today are overwhelmed, disengaged, underprepared, and struggling to execute strategy. The chapter also discusses how leadership development programs must do more to help address these challenges.

On March 31, 2014, I was meeting a colleague for lunch at a popular restaurant in Toronto. As we sat down at our table, I looked out through the restaurant windows. “Look at what’s happening up there!” I said to my colleague. I immediately pulled out my smartphone and took a photo.

Have you ever seen something happen and known right away, in your gut, that you were witnessing something significant?

In the distance, about six stories up in an adjacent building, I could see a couple of workers taking down a company’s outdoor sign. The sign consisted of five giant white letters, S – E – A – R – S, atop Sears Canada’s flagship store in one of the country’s largest and busiest shopping centers.

Throughout our lunch, I found myself glancing out the window to track the progress of the two workers as they painstakingly pried loose each letter. As the letters came off, I could see the imprint of the company’s name that remained on the brown building’s façade due to decades and decades of sun exposure. These phantom letters were a sad reminder of a once-great company, one of the most enduring retail brands that the world has ever known.

What I witnessed that afternoon was more than just a sign coming down. To me, it signaled the massive unraveling taking hold in the retail industry. That’s why that moment felt so important to me. That moment also underscored the kinds of challenges that leaders face today. Fast-forward to January of 2018. All the Sears stores in Canada would close. Sixteen thousand employees would lose their jobs. Their pensions would be at risk. By the end of 2018, the company in the United States would face a similar fate, only to be saved at the eleventh hour.

In many ways, the story of Sears is not unique. In the world of business, there has always been an understanding that the companies and leaders who can’t adapt, can’t spot opportunities, or can’t change quickly enough, end up paying a severe price. The graveyard of once-great companies is full of examples of organizations that have not been able to sustain their relevance and are now long extinct. In the end, they were unable to see the need to adapt in a changing environment. Harvard Business School Professor Clay Christensen shared a terrific insight at a recent conference when he said, “The new game begins even before you can tell anything is wrong in the old one.” 1This is a brilliant idea that to me captures a fundamental challenge leaders must be mindful of when leading. All leaders must be accountable for leading their organizations through change, and this is what we’ll explore in the rest of this chapter. To get us started, we’ll examine the story of Sears in more detail to show what can happen when leaders fail to see the new game emerging.

What I find fascinating about the story of Sears is that from the time it first incorporated in 1893, the company was a disruptor. There was the Sears catalogue. Sears was one of the first department stores. Sears’ amazing brands, like Craftsman tools and Kenmore appliances, inspired confidence, lasted forever, and gave consumers value for their money. The company was one of the first retailers to establish an online presence in early 2000. Sears found a way to innovate throughout most of its 125-year history. Despite all of this, the company struggled to survive in a dynamic and shifting retail landscape. This is a reality all leaders must embrace. Success doesn’t last forever.

The problems for Sears, according to many industry analysts, started in 2005 when it merged with Kmart, a strategy designed to boost two struggling retailers. 2At that time, Sears and Kmart had 3,500 stores in the United States. By 2018, they were down to just about 700 stores between the two brands. 3That’s an 80 percent erosion of the company’s footprint. From 2003 to 2018, the company lost 96 percent of its value, while its key competitors doubled in value. 4The company was missing the mark. Many argue Sears’ downfall was also the result of a failure to shift to digital. 5