Leaders Must…

In my spare time, I enjoy doing a little military history research. Not long ago, while reading through a March 1945 edition of the U.S. Army’s Field Artillery Journal, I came across an article with a title that immediately caught my attention:

“Leaders Must…”

Leaders must what?

I had to read it.

The article was only a page long and its author was anonymous. But packed into that single page were 28 principles describing what leaders must do.

Remember the context. This was March 1945. World War II was still raging, and military leaders were learning difficult lessons about leadership under extraordinarily demanding conditions.

Yet as I read the article 80 years later, I was struck by how little some things have changed.

Our organizations are different. Our missions are different. And thankfully, most of us aren’t leading people in combat. But many of the fundamental responsibilities of leadership remain remarkably similar.

Three principles in particular stood out to me.

1. Remove the Barriers

The author wrote that leaders must:

“Break down and overcome all difficulties standing between himself and the execution of his mission.”

Years later, James Hunter expressed a remarkably similar idea in his best-selling book, The Servant: A Simple Story About the True Essence of Leadership. Hunter wrote, “A leader is someone who identifies and meets the legitimate needs of their people, removes all the barriers, so they can serve the customer.”

Different era. Different context. Same fundamental responsibility.

Leaders remove barriers.

Every team encounters friction. Some obstacles can be overcome by the people closest to the problem. Others cannot. They require authority, resources, influence, decisions, or access that only the leader possesses.

When that happens, removing the obstacle becomes the leader’s responsibility.

So ask yourself:

What is standing between your people and their ability to accomplish the mission that only you can remove?

Maybe it is an unnecessary process. Maybe your team lacks resources. Maybe competing priorities have created confusion. Maybe another part of the organization needs to be engaged. Or maybe your people simply need you to make a decision.

Whatever the obstacle, don’t allow something within your ability to influence to unnecessarily slow your team down.

2. Choose Action Over Inaction

Another principle reads:

“Remember that it is better to make an error in judgment than to neglect opportunities or remain inactive.”

There is an important distinction here. This isn’t an argument for recklessness. In fact, another principle in the same article tells leaders to “take calculated risks.”

Rather, it is a warning about the danger of waiting for certainty before acting.

Leaders rarely have perfect information. Opportunities can be fleeting. Yet fear of making the wrong decision can cause us to hesitate until the opportunity disappears.

We sometimes say that perfection is the enemy of progress. Leadership frequently requires us to make the best decision we can with the information available and then move.

Because while you are inactive, your competitors are active.

Your competitors are making decisions. Conditions are changing. Opportunities are opening and closing.

Good judgment matters. But so does initiative.

Ask yourself:

Where is my team waiting for action when what it really needs is a decision?

Make the decision. Take the calculated risk. Seize the opportunity.

Then adjust when necessary.

3. Keep a Firm Grip on the Fundamentals

Of all 28 principles, one of the simplest may also be one of the most important:

“Keep a firm grip on fundamentals — the things that really matter.”

Leaders operate in complexity.

Our organizations are complex. Our environments are complex. Our problems are complex. And because the challenges look complicated, we can easily convince ourselves that the solutions must be complicated too.

Often, they aren’t.

One of the leader’s responsibilities is to simplify the complex. And one of the best ways to do that is to maintain a relentless focus on the fundamentals.

What are the few things your team absolutely must do well?

Communicate clearly. Set expectations. Build trust. Maintain standards. Develop people. Execute consistently. Hold one another accountable.

The specifics will vary by organization and mission, but every high-performing team has fundamentals.

Identify yours.

Teach them.

Practice them.

Reinforce them.

Hold people accountable to them.

When teams consistently do the basics really, really well, much of the complexity begins to take care of itself.

Timeless Leadership

More than 80 years separate us from the leaders who first read these words in the Field Artillery Journal. Their circumstances were dramatically different from ours.

The responsibilities described in that article, however, sound surprisingly familiar.

Remove the barriers preventing your people from accomplishing the mission.

Act when action is required.

Maintain a firm grip on the fundamentals.

Leadership principles endure because human beings endure. Technology changes. Organizations change. Markets change. The environment changes.

But people still look to leaders for clarity, confidence, judgment, and action.

Perhaps that is why an anonymous author writing during World War II can still offer useful advice to leaders more than eight decades later.

And since the author provided 28 principles, I’ll leave you with one more:

“Never belly-ache.”

If you don’t know what that means, I’ll leave that research to you.

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Leaders Must… was originally published in Horizon Performance on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.