Today I finished my day by helping a client come to terms with a key leadership practice.  I told him to “make adjustments or you will start lose your leadership edge.”

Keeping your edge sharp enough to cut through the push backs is a critical discipline of a leader who wants to keep their influence.  If you really want people to respect you then lead well.

Leaders become sluggish when they stop asking themselves how they need to adjust.  Everything and everyone is in a constant state of change and it is important to develop the discipline of making changes in thought and action.

As a suggestion, try to set a time each week when you take yourself through a simple inventory of your relationships, your work environment, and your decision making processes.  Ask yourself, “where do I need to make adjustments?”

(the following article is authored by David Aaker and was posted on the HBR Blog Network in July 2011)

Bob Lutz in his recent book Car Guys vs. Bean Counters makes the point that GM was doing fine until in the mid 1970s the MBA-trained finance guys took control of product development from the “car guys,” who were engineers and designers. The result, he says, was inferior cars and a decline in the firm. He believes that CEOs and the top management should not be bean counters but rather should be a “product guys.”

The poster child for his view was Roger Smith who was an MBA-trained accounting and finance specialist. During his ten year tenure as GE’s CEO during the 80s, Smith made breathtaking strategic and operating blunders. He invested in robotics that did not work, created a disastrous reorganization that resulted in cars so similar they were a joke (remember the Cadillac Cimarron?), mismanaged some ill-conceived acquisitions, built up enormous debt, and on and on. GM’s share went from 45% to 36% under his watch. A role model, on the other hand, was Steve Jobs, with no degree but deep computer expertise, who spawned a string of product successes brilliantly executed.

I think Bob is an impressive executive (ironically he does have an MBA although it was in the pre-quant MBA era; Berkeley-Haas is proud to claim him), but I disagree with his suggestion that background, product knowledge, or management style (he advocates an autocratic style) are predictors of CEO performance and behavior. Lou Gerstner did not know anything about computers when he brought IBM back from the near dead and Allan Mulally had no background in automobiles when he took over Ford. And I don’t believe that having an MBA or being in finance necessarily means that you are short-term focused or insensitive to customer demands.

Instead, in my view, a gifted CEO needs two qualities, and I believe that these come with birth, and not training. They are executive talent and strategic judgment.

Executive talent. Executives need a broad range of talent; excelling on a few dimensions is rarely enough. A truly gifted CEO should have a good feel for selecting, motivating, and evaluating people; developing and selling a strategy; creating an inspiring culture; developing an organizational structure and management process that work for the strategy; fostering cooperation across silos; understanding and using financial measures; and an understanding of how marketing, branding, finance, production, distribution contribute to strategy. With the right talent and DNA, a CEO who is missing background in some of these areas will quickly pick it up.

Strategic judgment. Some people just have a flare for good judgment — whether it is an ability to identify issues, distill facts, or develop instincts to make sound strategic decisions — and others simply do not. This too, in my opinion, is something you are born with. In my field, I see many who have deep experience in branding but relatively few that have a strategic flare. It can be improved but it cannot be created.

There are many with the talent and judgment to be successful CEOs that never get the opportunity to learn, to have the right experience, or to prove themselves. But, in my view, those that lack those qualities will not be successful no matter what background, training, experience, or mentoring they might have.

January naturally lends itself to new beginnings and our natural desire to do better.  Almost without exception all of my coaching conversations thus far have included something related to improvement in the focus department.

Focus is a skill that can be developed and strengthened over time.  One of the exercises that I have clients do is to identify times during the week that they can block out for projects and or critical thinking.  They are to have their administrative assistants put it down on their calendars as “unavailable” and rarely is the event to be cancelled although it can be moved.

To help them with the rapid flow of leadership issues that occur during the week, they are encouraged to create an open list called their “Critical Focus List (CFL).”  This is nothing more than a place where they can keep a list of projects and or decisions that they are going to work on during the time they have reserved for focus work. This is communicated with their team members so that they know when they can expect decisions to be made or responses to their questions given.

This “trick of the trade” has helped many of leaders over the years and is a tool that I still use every week.  This is not rocket science but I am surprised how many leaders struggle to take a proactive approach to their work load.

Here are a few questions for you that might be of help:

1. Do you have some sort of a CFL that is easy to access and update?
2. Do you block out times on a regular basis for focusing?
3. Have you created a culture in your office that promotes the use of blocking time and the use of CFLs?

With a little effort and improvement you will find yourself next December feeling better about your year and the way your invested your life.

Remember, if you can’t lead yourself well you will always struggle to lead others well.