Leadership according to Colin Powell

Colin Powell
Originally uploaded by dfarber.

Colin Powell spoke this week at the Salesforce.com's user and developer conference in San Francisco. Here's some of what he said.

• Good leaders inspire, not motivate. The best leaders can inspire people, so they can do things through self-motivation.


• Leadership involves developing a vision and conveying that purpose throughout the organization.


• You need to make sure the followers have the skills and tools needed to get the job done. Leadership is about creating bonds of trust.

Good stuff, eh? So, how can we help our Coast Guard leaders -- at all levels of the organization -- abide by these Powellisms?

A graphical UPF...

Several years ago, I sat through a UPF workshop conducted by one of our superb colleagues. I thought the workshop went well, but I also thought the participants -- all senior Captains and a disctrict commander -- didn't get it. What they didn't get, I thought, was why this document is important, what the relationships of the stuff on the UPF are, and how the information can help in strategic planning.

The workshop was fine. The form sucks.

So, I came back and built the GUPF. Here it is:



As you click through it, you'll see that one slide builds upon the next. Yes, it's pretty convoluted by the end, but...

Anyone who wants to try and create a different mental model, please have at it. We need to nail this so that we have a working mental model that appeals to various people and makes things easier to understand.

Is that OMG or OGMI?

Leaders are always looking for good tools... A couple of years ago, I developed the OGMI model... while I'd posted the workshop process, I hadn't posted an example... well, you can now find it here.