S.I.G.M.A Landscape

Serve:

In order to lead, you must first serve

Summary: As opposed to sitting at the top of the pyramid of power and having everyone below you serve you, instead you must strive toward a concept called "servant leadership." This concept flips the pyramid of power upside down, and instead implements the idea that as a leader you must serve your team as opposed to them serving you.

Application: Universal truth - everyone wants to be supported and know that their leader(s) will work to knock down obstacles and barriers to their success.

Inspire:

Inspired employees and teams perform better, and are able to fully utilize their creativity and knowledge.

Summary: The best leaders and team members always strive to either inspire or be an inspiration to others in order to drive the utmost results alongside your team. An inspired team that is cohesive and motivated to accomplish the same goals will always outperform uninspired teams that have little motivation to accomplish their objectives.

Quote to Remember: People usually don't remember what you say, they sometimes remember what you do, but they always remember how you made them feel. When you inspire someone, you make a lasting impression and can unlock their best performance.

Grow:

Invest time in the growth and development of those around you (including your direct team, indirect team, and even friends/acquaintances).

Summary: This is a very important way of "paying it forward," and will build a lifetime of wonderful relationships. In addition, hire and coach your team to make sure they always bring a "Growth Mindset" to everything they do. This mindset is a relentless drive to seek opportunities for growth and build strategies, one that finds opportunities no matter how difficult the surrounding environment.

Application: Without ensuring this is done consistently and effectively, all of the time and effort that was spent in serving and Inspiring your team will be a complete waste. You could do both of those very well, but lose great employees because you are not spending enough time building a personalized future for them.

Measure:

Summary: Identify the key performance indicators (KPI's) that best track progress against your objectives and build a management system to track and react when things are off course.

Application: Some organizations have this embedded more consistently than others. If you see that people tend to talk across each other and have conflicting views of how the team is progressing towards its targets, it is likely you have an ineffective measurement system.

Accelerate:

Become obsessed with problems, not solutions, and relentlessly focus on ways to remove waste and accelerate results.

Summary: Leaders are accountable to drive urgency, find ways to remove waste for processes, and generally facilitate speed of execution for their teams. Different situations require the use of different tools to accelerate delivery of results, but, ultimately a leader needs to consistently ensure that the team is accelerating in all of the areas required to deliver the strategic objectives and expected results.

Application: Anywhere there is a clear deliverable, this element can be applied.

Concept Summary:

S.I.G. - Elements of the style and approach to leading people.

M.A. - Elements on how to monitor and approach your daily work and quantitatively measure results.