Let’s flash back to that time in the early 80’s, yes that’s right, in the prior millennium, when I had just been offered the opportunity to lead the largest district for my division in a Fortune 200 firm. I was only 26 years old at the time and I was both excited and honestly a little intimidated. You see, I was going to be responsible for leading four operations with the expectation to expand into a fifth. In addition, the two managers, who I was replacing, had run as a region what I was being asked to lead as a district. They had just run the same responsibilities I had been given and they had a lot more time with the company than I had and there were two of them and one of me. In addition, one of them was to be my new boss and the other his boss. The first thing they told me was, “these guys running your district’s operations are going to tell you they are going to need a lot more people – don’t listen to them”. As soon as I heard “don’t listen to them”, I knew something was wrong. All four of the managers who would report to me were older than I was, had been with the company longer. Even though I had run operations like theirs, mine had not been as complicated and did not have the revenues theirs had. In addition, this District I had been given was regarded as the top-performing group in the division. It had the lowest cost and highest revenue. The mandate I was given was “prove we are right to choose you Dave, and don’t screw it up”.
I knew I could not go to my bosses right away and ask for anything that contradicted what they had told me. I was to be a good soldier and follow orders. Many said, including my own Dad, that I was fortunate to have this position at such an early age so how could I put that in jeopardy. Nevertheless, I could not face these managers day after day knowing from my initial assessment that they had to have more resources. I could not be part of the problem and consider myself worthy as even their manager. They did not have to like me but I did want to earn their respect and them mine.
The first step in any assignment is to assess the situation. My assessment told me that this assignment would stretch and require me to grow as a leader more than anything I had experienced in my life. I did not fully realize up front that I was not only going to have to lead them, both of my bosses and a host of support groups to make this happen. In other words, I must practice leadership by influence as John Maxwell describes in his excellent work The 3600 Leader (Jan. 2006). Something else my initial assessment told me was what had been considered the top-performing region was in fact a turnaround. How could two people be promoted from a responsibility that was in such bad shape that it needed operational turnaround expertise? John Kotter in The Heart of Change says that the first step in initiating change is the “creation of a sense of urgency”. All of my direct reports were demoralized to the point that their sense of urgency was living through each 16-hour day. My sense of urgency was realizing I had been set up to fail whether intentionally or unintentionally. Our collective sense of urgency became we can’t live like this. Either commit to fix it or leave the company. We did not fail we excelled because I learned to lead and taught my mangers to be leaders in a non-leadership culture.
Amazing! Yes, great things can come from within the ranks.
Total Value Partners 
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