What makes her a ten? One: She stands for something meaningful–something ennobling–something that lifts us up, and people are drawn to that. Two: She also communicates the sense of possibilities, of optimism, and of a better future.

What do you stand for? Do you stand for something significant and meaningful? Are you consistent in what you stand for? Secondly, is it enough to draw people to you? You have to attract the best possible talent, and to do that you have to be a ten.

And so the idea had been that if we could shut down sections of Broadway, we could increase the speed of traffic. So, though the idea was there, no one had really dared to do it. And the question was, “How did the current administration do it?” Not only did they do it successfully, but they did it in less than one year.
 

They framed it eloquently: They just made one case–this was an issue of traffic flow–something every New Yorker cared about. Secondly, they designed a test. So , they didn’t make it a total rollout at first. They presented data before and after the test was run, and the data showed that the decision made good sense.

This was something that many city planners had recommended, but no one had had the guts to try. Do you have a New York Times Square size initiative that you’ve been waiting to solve? Perhaps you already know how it can be dealt with successfully but no one has had the guts to try it.

1. Frame the problem.
2. Design a test.
3. Use the data.
4. If it verifies your thesis, implement the change.

So, why these two questions?

Because every craftsman, every artisan must know their material and their process.  So lets take the ancient craft of pottery, for example.  Here the artisan must know the clay.
 

 
So what is a leader’s material?  A leader’s material is people’s talent, creativity, passion, and desire for contribution for making a difference.  This is why we need to understand why people choose to give the very best of themselves.

Secondly, the one process every leader must master is the process of change.  After all, that is the work of the leader–to take an organization from where it is today, to where it needs to be in the future.  Now most leaders who have been promoted a couple of times already have a good sense of what those answers are, but often have not really articulated it.  It maybe a good understanding, good intuition or something sort of put together over time.

The challenge comes when you get promoted from leading a couple of hundred people to a couple of thousand people because you have less direct contact with the people you lead.

Many leaders can answer these questions for themselves, but sometimes you need a little time out to go away and work intensely with someone to do this, and that’s what I often do with leaders who are in that transition.  They come to New York for a couple of days, and we do an intense one-to-one, and when they leave they have greater clarity and they have practiced how to communicate their answers to those two questions.

Lack of sleep affects your executive function. That means it affects your ability to pay attention, to plan, and to solve problems. What’s more troublesome, is that it affects your ability to learn. As a leader you have to be a great learner.
 

The average knowledge worker has only about eleven minutes of uninterrupted time before their off to another meeting, another call or another event. And within that time, they tend to interrupt themselves maybe two or three times to check something on the internet, check an incoming message or something else. That means we’re doing our work in spurts of maybe three to four minutes of continuous time.
 

So very often when there is that knock on the door, someone stops you in the hallway, or pulls you out of a meeting for a quick question we view these as interruptions in our day, but in reality these are opportunities to lead.

The leader in these TouchPoints is not necessarily the one with the biggest title, but the one who behaves like a leader. So to do this consistently, you need to have the head for leadership, the heart, the hands, and the touch.

Having the head for leadership means that you have a very clear leadership model so that you behave consistently in the way you deal with the issue. Having the heart for leadership means you have got clear intentions and people trust who you are and what you stand for. And having the hands for leadership means that you’re clearly competent.

The next challenge is to develop the leaders around you so they can do the same. That is one of the things my co-author, Doug Conant, CEO of Campbell Soup Company, does brilliantly.

You need to think leadership in even the smallest of moments. That is why TouchPoints is such a powerful notion for leaders today.

Dad had a few apprentices that worked with him in the dairy, and they had room and board with us. They were pretty much part of the family for the couple of years they stayed with us. When I look back now, it was sort of a 24/7 petri dish of leadership, and one of the things I learned is that leadership is personal.
 

When these young men stayed with us for two years, we really got to know them and care about them. Dad not only taught them the trade, but was there during very formative years to help them become young men.

The other thing I learned was that there is this spirit of generosity to it, because in exchange for their labor and salary, what you owe them as a leader in that situation is that you owe to teach them a livelihood–to teach them their craft.

The third thing I learned which today is so critical, is that leadership does need a sense of urgency. Down in the dairy at that time, no one walked. You ran! People also knew that you didn’t just have to run, but you had to run fast because if you didn’t Dad would run up behind them and step on the back of their clogs, so when they could hear Dad coming, they would always speed up. So there was always this sense of tempo down there and that in itself I really enjoyed.

Leadership is personal, it’s generous and there is this sense of urgency.

What I do today is really the kind of thing Dad did, where I help leaders master the craft of leadership. I will work with high-potential leaders in an organization for a year or two years so that they can be on their way to bigger and better things.

There is this huge crack that the ugly duckling slips in through to get away from the elements and the dangers. In this little house is a cat and a hen, and those two creatures represent that narrow-minded, self-satisfied and smug citizen that Hans Christian Andersen struggled with all his life.
 

This little ugly duckling, who is really a baby swan, isn’t meant to be indoors. It’s meant to be outside on the water! Being cooped up indoors, the duckling begins to remember the water–to dream of the water–and to say to the cat and the hen, “Don’t you ever miss the water?”

The whole journey in this book is about it finally leaving the safe harbor and going back into the world. After a horrible winter, he finds the group where he belongs–finding the element where he belongs. So this is really a story about growing into your full potential–finding the place where you can thrive and people can see what you can contribute.

The book starts with this very depressed-looking creature going to work, because there’s no joy in his life and he’s someplace he doesn’t belong. As you get into the story, you see the hen trying to get the duckling to conform to the element. By the end of the book, he finds where he belongs and you see him taking flight.