My Daily Leadership, A Powerful Roadmap For Leadership Success, by Antonio Garrido, Post Hill Press 2022

From Post Hill Press, an independent publisher with an affiliation with Simon and Schuster, comes a practical, working guide to amping up to true leadership level.  Because the leadership challenges come at you hourly, and sometimes even minute to minute - as in supply chain and production crises - this whole exercise of working with and not disappointing personnel can be intimidating.  And so the offerings contained in author Garrido's My Daily Leadership are geared to just that - tools to practice and improve everything a new, "young" leader knows he/she absolutely must improve. 

If you want to learn how to light and build fires within, and not under, people, and you want to learn how to light and build a fire within yourself, then the My Daily Leadership development program is definitely for you.  Antonio Garrido

Take his Leadership Journal as your starting point.  Garrido's work teaching clients to use Leadership Journaling is designed to help executives uncover what is important, what works, and the steps to get there.  It's a thoughtful but powerful tool designed to build staying power and employee support as well as self-knowledge and direction.  And here the author urges his followers to look beyond the numbers - although the numbers may be a great place to start - the numbers don't tell the whole story, and in some areas - new products for instance - it may be too early to manage by the numbers.  That is where leadership principles in absence of the numbers and other motivators must be set securely in place. 

Tomorrow I will do better...

Readers will want to pay close attention to the author's thirty-day exercise in goal setting, what he calls "Morning Momentum" and lookback, or "Evening Evaluation" (the report card), because it shows us how easily we fall off track, and because, diligently used for thirty days in a row, how we can uncover reasonable and doable goals.  "Day 3:  Morning Momentum - What's standing in your way" is a tough time because at this point we are forced to list all the roadblocks and speed traps out there, some of which can be removed or repaired, and some of which may require rerouting.  This is a very useful exercise in perspective.  Not every threat, not every obstacle must be immediately addressed, but the author urges us to write them all down, every one.  

By Day 5 in your Thirty-day exercise you will have the opportunity to list some positives as you are asked to name "gifts and talents that will help you achieve your goals."  IT skills for instance, may become critical to crisis leadership - your obsession with software may finally pay off!  Or a lingering respect for kaizen workshops might come in handy.  The author encourages us to list and reflect on all possibilities because, as we discovered during Covid, crises don't stick to the formula.

Chapter 14 - How's the weather today?  Are you more interested in the weather or the climate?

       "I skate to where the puck will be."  Wayne Gretzky

       "I'm too busy mopping up the floor to turn off the faucet."

       "How to land a plane."

Don't wait until the end of Chapter 13 to hit this section - its fun and crazy, with descriptions of work problems most of us seldom - or never - encounter, such as "How to land a plane!"  Apparently the whole process breaks down into thousand foot steps, even with massively integrated software.  And if you have ever jumped out of a plane, as have I, you will appreciate the intensity of ramping up the decision-making speed!

Patricia E. Moody

FORTUNE magazine  "Pioneering Woman in Mfg" 

IndustryWeek IdeaXchange Xpert

A Mill Girl at Blue Heron Journal, on-line resource for business thought-leaders and decision-makers,  patriciaemoody@gmail.com