OUR FUTURE IS YOURS ALONE

OUR FUTURE IS YOURS ALONE ^[45]

Here s what the people who report to you want more than anything else: they want you to stop managing and start leading. They have been managed into oblivion, but they want to come back from the void. They want no more doublespeak from you; they will puke if one more time you excuse your decisions and actions by saying it s political, and every time you say one thing but do another only further crushes their souls (and yours, too; only you may not think about it).

You want change in your organization? You want things to be different? You want a future that people buy into? You want success? Here s the best advice I can give you: Stop saying stuff and start doing things. Lose the adjectives and hyperbole from your vocabulary and start speaking and acting in imperative verbs. And there is no better place to start than with your organization s CMMI-based process improvement effort. The rest of this chapter tells you how.

^[45] Taylor, Jim and Wacker, Watts with Means, Howard, The Visionary s Handbook: Nine Paradoxes That Will Shape the Future of Your Business , HarperBusiness, 2001.