Catapulted: How Great Leaders Succeed Beyond Their Experience

By Dave Jennings

Reach beyond your own personal experience and knowledge and rise faster and farther with this “engaging and practical” leadership guide (Stephen R. Covey, author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People).

Being an effective leader means making decisions. But many of those decisions may pertain to situations or information you aren’t be familiar with. What is a leader to do then?
 
You have to make choices about the future for yourself, your team, and your organization. You need to get your team aligned in the same direction while building key relationships both internally and externally. And, you have to do all this while you maintain your sanity among competing demands.
 
Leadership expert Dave Jennings doesn’t ask you to change your leadership skill set. He invites you to change your mind set about how you approach life when you are in over your head—sometimes way over your head.
 
Catapulted is a “great read” that will provide you with the tools to succeed in situations that go beyond your comfort zone. Get ready to fly (Gary Bowen, chief financial officer, OGIO International).
 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Aug 1, 2008
• ISBN: 9781600378133

Dave Jennings

Dave Jennings is a leadership and organizational change consultant. He has guided leaders from across the globe to navigate The Pit of Success for themselves, their teams, and their company. He has worked with such organizations as Salesforce, Microsoft, Intel, Oracle, Deloitte, Exxon/Mobil, Schneider Electric, Myriad Genetics, Kaiser-Permanente, Alaska Airlines, and the FBI. He has been a featured speaker at leadership conferences in twenty-two countries. He is author of Catapulted: How Great Leaders Succeed Beyond Their Experience, and his articles and commentary have been relied on by the Washington Post, Forbes, and TheStreet.com. He is an adjunct instructor for Kenan-Flagler Business School’s Executive Development program at the University of North Carolina. He earned his PhD researching change resilience. Contact Dave at [e-mail] or learn more online at www.learnablesolutions.com and www.davejennings.com. Dave resides in Alpine, UT.

Book preview

PREFACE

As A LEADER, YOU ARE constantly thrown beyond your experience. It doesn’t matter if you are a Fortune 500 CEO, a department manager, or the PTA president. The situation is the same. When you accept the responsibility to lead, you discover the job is bigger than your experience. This has always been true.

However, what’s different in today’s economy is the expectation for you to perform at higher levels sooner—much sooner.

This demand is caused by several factors. First, the complexity of today’s organizations has created a steeper learning curve. So, you not only have to think about budgeting, scheduling, and planning, you also have to think politically, environmentally, and globally. And, even if your company isn’t global, your customer’s company probably is.

Second, thirty-five percent of the workforce is expected to retire during the next ten years. This exodus has already created holes in leadership. The sheer number of leadership opportunities is greater than the supply of leaders.

Third, organizational tenure is shorter. Switching companies is more common for you, your boss, and your employees. Thus, company knowledge is no longer maintained. You must spend more time learning, aligning, and influencing to get the same things done.

These and other trends are contributing to the fact that over 40 percent of companies worldwide are unable to find qualified leaders. Additionally, the shortage of prepared leaders has made managerial and executive jobs ranked as one of the top ten jobs needing more people.

So, what can you do in this new world? How can you more quickly fill the widening gap between demands and experience? How can you step up and lead at the next level? The answer is found within Catapulted: How great leaders succeed beyond their experience.

Catapulted provides you a path to enhance your mindset and your skill set. You gain a new perspective on how to approach your job and proven tools to do your job.

To embrace the spirit of leaving your comfort zone, Catapulted is told as a leadership parable. The main character is a manufacturing manager named Stan. He is promoted into a crisis and is wondering why he ever took the job. He is expected to make critical decisions without complete information. And, in the midst of all his challenges, he can’t get over the feeling that he is just faking his way through management. Stan must discover where to focus his energy before time runs out.

Stan’s story is based on the experience of thousands of leaders who stepped up to embrace the real job of leadership. Stan is waiting to tell you his story—the story you share with every leader.

Because I’m the manager, people think I know about a lot of things. So, I make things up as I go: answers in staff meetings, predictions about the next year, and estimates on budget.

It’s not exactly lying. It’s closer to making an educated guess—on something I’m not educated about. I’m supposed to know, so I act like I do. It takes a lot of energy.

It isn’t just work that people expect me to know about. I’ve got employees who ask me how to raise kids, buy a car, select a major, choose a house, and know if they are in love.

They seem to think I have a corner on the future. What a funny position to be in. I haven’t figured out for myself half the things they want me to solve for them. Sometimes it is an ego boost. Sometimes it is a drain.

If I were really honest with myself, I would have to say that sometimes—even a lot of times—I don’t really know what in the world I am doing. I keep wondering when my boss will realize I am just faking it.

For me, being a manager is like taking someone else’s identity and seeing how long I can maintain the charade. I often question how long it will be before someone figures out that I don’t really know what I am doing.

I sometimes wonder when the leadership police will surround my office and tell me to come out with my hands up so that no one will get hurt. I then come out peacefully, and they parade me in handcuffs through my colleagues. The police charge me with impersonating a leader and put me in jail, so I can’t hurt anybody.

I used to think leaders were these people who were confident, inspiring, and knowledgeable. Nowadays, I look in the mirror, and I see me—just me. I have weeds in my lawn, kids who talk back, and credit card challenges. And, I don’t own a crystal ball that tells me what we should do next at work.

I didn’t start off expecting to be in this exact position. In fact, I really enjoyed most of the things I was doing in my old job—solving problems, figuring out the details, and seeing things get finished! I enjoyed the expertise and respect I had gained in my last job. I felt like I knew what I was doing.

Nowadays, there are so many more people to stay connected with and so many more changes and ambiguities. There is less control of more things.

In this job, I don’t have time to do any of the good stuff I’m supposed to do as a manager. You know—be strategic, coach, listen, develop, inspire, etc. Hah! I’ve got so many fires to put out that I hardly have time for any of that stuff. I think survival is really underrated.

Sometimes, I think I spend so much time on