Its All Vision and Talk, Until We Take Action

Barnette Crabtree is President of Sun River Builders and a good friend. Once during a conversation with Barnette I shared with him a new vision that I had for Leadership Edge which is the company I serve as President. Barnette responded by saying, “John, I like visionaries. Then with a smile and a wink he followed with, “But I just LOVE implementers.” His point was well made. Visions are important. However implementation or execution of the vision is even more important.

On October 2nd New York Times columnist David Brooks wrote a provocative column on the questionable impact of Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck. The following paragraphs summarize Brooks’ argument:

So what is the theme of our history lesson? It is a story of remarkable volume and utter weakness. It is the story of media mavens who claim to represent a hidden majority but who in fact represent a mere niche — even in the Republican Party. It is a story as old as “The Wizard of Oz,” of grand illusions and small men behind the curtain.

The rise of Beck, Hannity, Bill O’Reilly and the rest has correlated almost perfectly with the decline of the G.O.P. But it’s not because the talk jocks have real power. It’s because they have illusory power, because Republicans hear the media mythology and fall for it every time.

It seems that Brooks’ opinion is that the listeners of the right-wing media are not great implementers. They listen to Limbaugh, Hannity, Beck and the like, but they fail to have significant impact implementing the vision that is generated by these media entertainers and commentators.

For close to 20 years I have used The Leadership Challenge by Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner as a guide for my own leadership and that of those that I train. This model teaches that effective leaders challenge the status quo and inspire a shared vision. But it also helps us to see that all of that is for naught if the leader is unable to enable others to take action on implementing the vision. The adage goes, “he who leads, but no one follows, is merely taking a walk.” A real test of leadership is moving people to right action, not just to inspiring visions.

Perhaps history will one day clearly understand the impact that the right-wing media have had on leading its listeners to take right action. Maybe David Brooks will be proven correct in his analysis. Until then I agree with my buddy Barnette. I just LOVE implementers.