The restaurant that serves sushi, pizza, and tajine.
Have you ever visited a restaurant serving sushi, pizza, and tajine? Probably not.
And for good reason. Making one style of food is already tricky. And if you saw a menu as incoherent as the one above, I’m guessing you would skip the restaurant. Why? Because the odds are small that the chef can successfully execute sushi, pizza, and tajine.
The same applies to leadership styles.
Organizations can’t prescribe incoherent leadership principles and expect their managers to execute them successfully.
Organizations that want to optimize leadership principles might benefit from applying the restaurant menu metaphor.
Here’s an example of a set of leadership principles that I like:
(1) Obsess about the customer, (2) Enable your team to drive customer value, (3) Deliver in swift iterations with a laser focus on continuous learning.
I like this set because it’s coherent. Here, the leadership principles are customer-centric, and you can read them as a narrative with three consistent chapters.
Just like a restaurant serving a coherent three-course meal.