On Leadership again…
A review of ‘Leadership without Excuses’ by Jeff Grimshaw and Gregg Baron

By Divyadarshini Patel
Leadership without Excuses – How to Create Accountability and High Performance (instead of just talking about it) - The first thing that struck me when I started reading this book was the font size of the print. It has been long time since I read a management book that was not stressful for my eyes. With a good first impression and a catchy introduction, the book was definitely a must-finish-reading-this-ASAP for me.

Introducing the three kinds of people we deal with on a daily basis was a well narrated chapter. You can see a glimpse of the points discussed in the graph from the book. Reading further, it feels like going through a story of transformation; the transformation of the Save-ables into Saints. This idea has been well painted, aptly indicating how leaders can bring about this change in their employees. The book summaries how to eliminate ‘excuses and excuse-making’ from the system, thus, carving a path for responsibility and high performance probability. The book’s motive seems to be only one – achieving success by excluding excuses from the work routine – presenting a changed facade of regular office life.
The examples quoted in the book and the insights presented by the authors are reflective of the areas that the leaders should pay attention to. ‘Leadership without Excuses’ is a befitting title as it presents the idea of “prevention is better than cure”, which matches the case of how to prevent excuses from being given altogether. To sum it up in a couple of words, the book is a highly engaging one.

From the Book Abandon the Hope Method, All Ye Who Enter Here ... and Take Action Instead Here are a couple of other interesting examples of leaders rewarding what they want to see more of ... instead of just hoping for it: We're working to break down silos here. We had too much "white space" between functions. So we're implementing incentives that reward cross-functional behavior and achievement of cross-functional goals. And whenever I find an opportunity for a problem that comes to my attention, I assign people from at least two different functions to work together on it. Not because it is necessarily the most efficient way - of solving a problem but because it promotesrequires-cooperation and communication across boundaries, which for now is really needed ... until this is more natural for people. —Bob Walton, Division President, Qualcomm Enterprise Services