Bill Gallagher explains how to shift managers from individual-contributor thinking to strategic leadership. The key: stop treating your team like checkers pieces that all move the same way. Learn to play chess instead, orchestrating each person's unique strengths into a winning strategy.
I think what was most telling is that these managers were used to getting things done their way. They were very successful. Then you give them a group of three to five people that didn't do things their way. And we needed to teach these managers how to, I think, as Vern would say, play chess versus checkers. Know that each person moves differently, has a unique strength, and yet, at the end of the day, if you can put all these moves together, you can have a winning strategy. And that was the missing link for these young managers, teaching them how to play chess. But, boy, once they got it, they were even more amazing than they were in the beginning.
