Leaving aside the political implications of Republican Senator-elect Scott Brown’s come-from-behind victory in Massachusetts last month, the events that shaped the results of that Senate race provide us with an invaluable lesson on leadership and life.

I believe that to be an effective leader, one has not only make good decisions, one has to also make good “anti-decisions.” Most of us know about and practice the art of good decision making, which involves saying yes to the right things, but few of us are aware of the importance of good anti-decision making, which involves saying no to the right things. In other words, effective leadership requires disciplined focus.

A year before this week’s Senate election in Massachusetts, President Obama took the oath of office and became America’s 44^th President of the United States. In his inspiring inaugural address, excerpted in the following paragraph, he laid out an enormous plan for change:

“For everywhere we look, there is work to be done. The state of the economy calls for action, bold and swift, and we will act — not only to create new jobs, but to lay a new foundation for growth. We will build the roads and bridges, the electric grids and digital lines that feed our commerce and bind us together. We will restore science to its rightful place, and wield technology’s wonders to raise health care’s quality and lower its cost. We will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories. And we will transform our schools and colleges and universities to meet the demands of a new age. All this we can do. And all this we will do.”

I counted seven objectives in that one paragraph, which is actually fine, even commendable. When I was learning the art of leadership as a young midshipman in the Naval Reserve Officers Training Program at the University of Southern California, one of the things we used to say was “make no small plans.” This was a pithy reminder to us fledgling leaders that effective leadership required boldness and vision. I was therefore very encouraged by our new president’s big plans.

As the days following President Obama’s inauguration began to pass, I realized that he seemed to be making the same mistake that most new leaders (and many of us) make, faced with so much that needed to be done, instead of implementing his big plans one small piece at a time, he was attempting to do everything at once: create jobs, overhaul healthcare, protect the environment, transform education, and combat terrorism (which wasn’t on his original inaugural list). Ironically, in the very next paragraph of his inaugural address, President Obama acknowledged the challenge he would be facing:

“Now, there are some who question the scale of our ambitions — who suggest that our system cannot tolerate too many big plans.”

It turns out that whoever it was who was questioning the scale of the president’s ambitions was right. Very few systems, particularly those involving human beings, can tolerate too many big plans being implemented at the same time. President Obama is learning the hard way that effective leadership requires a disciplined focus that says no (or at least not right now) to the right things. In his pursuit to do it all, it appears that voters, at least in Massachusetts, feel that the president hasn’t done anything: jobless rates are still rising as stimulus money sits unspent in federal coffers; healthcare reform is stalled; environmental legislation languishes in committee; education spending is decreasing in most states across the nation; and the war on terror continues to consume even more people and scarce resources.

But this doesn’t have to be the end of the story. The president is not the first leader to experience his big plans lose momentum and flounder. Thousands of leaders have faced similar challenges in their lives as they worked to turn their visions into reality. Those leaders learned that the pathway to success involved becoming skilled at decision-making and disciplined in anti decision-making. What the president needs to do (or you, if you find yourself in a similar situation) is choose one objective to work on at a time, like job creation, for example, focus on achieving that objective, and use the momentum from that achievement to begin working on the next objective.

This is what the miracle in Massachusetts has to teach us, if we are willing to listen and learn.

Warmest Regards,

Coach Paul
www.lifechangingcoaching.com

“And if your home is just another place where you’re a stranger, and far away is just somewhere you’ve never been. I hope that you’ll remember, I am your friend.” – Rich Mullins

Life-Changing Coaching by Paul Edward is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivative Works 3.0 License.