“You can’t always get what you want….”
The purpose of this article is to provide the busy, often overwhelmed new leader (or even existing leaders), with common sense ideas about how to take charge and move forward and meet key objectives with the team or organization they “got,” not what they wished they had. Along with each of the brief ten steps I recommend, I have included suggestions for further study. The steps I suggest in this article are not complex or difficult. You don’t need to hire consultants; just dive in and be a leader who brings the best out of your team or organization.
One of the first things new leaders do is assess the talents of the players they have to work with, hoping they are A or at least B level players. It doesn’t take long to discover the hard facts: they are not all A or B players, many are C or even D level. The tendency, then, is to wonder, “How can I get better players.” Yet, it is not realistic to think you can replace the C and D players; at least not right away. You can’t clean house and start from scratch, and you don’t have much opportunity to bring in new people at, hopefully, an A or B level. “What you got is what you got.” The alternative is to see yourself as a leader of humans with infinite potential. Your success is in the hands of these people, the ones you got, regardless of what level player they are, and they likely have untapped potential. The situation you are in brings to mind the Mick Jager/Keith Richard classic, “You can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometime you find you get what you need.” Initially, your job is to to build success and achieve key results with what you have, and you likely will find you get what you need. This can be achieved achieved, if you try, through implementing the ten steps outlined in this article.