Leadership on the Sidewalk

Share with you a short article that addresses the importance of “leadership” that leads the way and moves onto the same direction. When aleader can gather his man and move an object which is much larger than individual can handle the whole thing, it requires good sense of managment. This short essay, along with the graphic, did depict the essence of good management and powerful leadership.


Leadership on the Sidewalk
Recently I attended a Six Sigma conference in Florida, where many of the presentations were about the importance of senior management commitment (the subject of at least 30% of all six sigma conference presentations, or so it seems). When walking across the hotel grounds, I noticed a dead lizard on the side walk. The lizard was about 5 inches long from head to tail. As I looked closer, I noticed that a large number of really small ants were attempting to carry the lizard away to make a year’s worth of lizard stew and lizard sausage back at the colony. Amazingly, the ants were actually moving the lizard.

There was just one problem: all of the various parts of the lizard were not moving in the same direction. It looked more like an uncoordinated line-dance – lots of movement, but no progress. The ants were obviously well-trained at lizard-lifting. They knew their jobs, and they were highly motivated. But they lacked leadership, direction, and structure in the face of a large task. I suspect that they could have quickly carried off a small bug, but the job of moving an entire lizard exceeded the capabilities that are hard-wired into their little proto-brains.

The analogy to a Six Sigma deployment was pretty direct. The larger and more complex the task, the greater the need for leadership, direction, and a structure that facilitates problem-solving. So leadership is paramount! Something to consider the next time you engage in a heavy-lizard-moving exercise - like a Lean Six Sigma deployment.