Good Morning,
I recently finished a book “Get Your Ship Together” by D. Michael Abrashoff (http://books.google.com/books?id=27QAAAAACAAJ&dq=inauthor:D+inauthor:Michael+inauthor:Abrashoff ) This is a sequel to his landmark book “It’s Your Ship”. Michael, formerly Captain Abrashoff was the skipper of the USS Benfell in the US Navy and practiced different leadership skills than espoused in the Navy and built a high performance team and one of the best ships in all of the Navy due to it.
In this book, (I noticed he has a third coming out next month), he continues to share with us practical leadership lessons and does so with the help of other great leaders. Some are military, some are corporate and one which really sang out to me is in law enforcement. The last part of Get Your Ship Together covers the leadership experiences and wisdom of Ward Clapham who is part of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP). Ward not only had tough assignment after tough assignment, but he chose the hardest ones and excelled in each. No matter what rank or position Ward held, he is always willing to dive in and do whatever is necessary, even getting his hands dirty at times.
Ward worked his way up from the bottom and focused on tackling tough problems by reaching out and embracing people instead of using traditional fear tactics like command and control. Ward overcame budget and staffing shortfalls by making the people he was charged with protecting his partners instead of his advisories or just faceless clients. He met often with the locals where they lived, worked and played and showed them that he was one of them. I loved the part of his singing karaoke “I fought the law and the law won” with all his new friends in the community.
When seeing problems, Ward looked at the root cause and addressed that rather than confronting symptoms alone. When kids were vandalizing businesses, rather than busting the kids or their parents he looked to the source of the problem. They were bored. So he came up with activities for them, and crime dropped. Ward found creative ways to help the community and then fought to institutionalize these programs, like bringing at risk kids to hockey games with their favorite officer.
Ward Clapham (http://www.wardclapham.com/) is another great leader we can all learn something from.
Tackle problems head on, and focus on fixing the root of the problem, and you will see positive change!
Enjoy!
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