The stories we’ve been reading these past few weeks about Kazuo Hirai, Sony’s new CEO, and the challenges of reversing a 10+ year slide are downright sad – but not entirely surprising. For a long time we’ve been watching Sony act as if it were run by a bunch of tired veterans from an out-of-touch generation. At one point in its sixty-five-year history, however, Sony was an electronics rock star.

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We talked about PepsiCo in this blog last week, but I can’t resist citing a social responsibility example from that company.  Specifically, Business Week noted recently Pepsi spent an eye-popping $100 million on the “Pepsi Refresh Project,” a heavily digital campaign where people compete to win grants for community endeavors – everything from building animal rescue shelters to buying new instruments for a high school marching band.  It seems that the huge spending behind this effort, as well as Pepsi’s large but struggling push into “good-for-you” food, were likely funded by Pepsi’s large decrease in its beverage marketing budget.

As the business press has pointed out, PepsiCo’s big pullback in beverage marketing, which analysts note will require hundreds of millions of dollars to restore to levels of a few years ago, was undoubtedly the key  factor that enabled Diet Coke to overtake Regular Pepsi and gain the #2 market share position ( Regular Coke holds the #1 position).  I am sure there are some high school bands that are very happy about the whole thing, but shareholders are not happy; in the last two years, PepsiCo’s share price has been flat while Coke went up 40%.

Courageous leaders know that companies exist to serve shareholders while also being good corporate citizens. They don’t allow social responsibility projects to get out of control and punish shareholders, but they also don’t allow social responsibility to be ignored.

Let me know your thoughts on this.

“Always remember, your focus determines your reality.”

In business, what is important is getting things done.  In pursuing that simply notion, too often we are not clear about the real goal, or even worse, we have several.  Lots of things are going on and everyone complains about being busy but in the end, the status quo remains.

Strong leaders know how to focus; they make it vividly clear what the goal is and what final achievement of that goal looks like.   One of my favorite stories in this area is about Canon.  When Fugio Matarai was named CEO over a decade ago, Canon was a mess.  Debt was over $7 billion and most of the ten or so product divisions were losing money, and there was no sense of direction.

Mitarai was the master of focus.  He shut down six money losing divisions and reorganized the company into three divisions; printers, copiers, and cameras.  Each was told their focus was to be number one in their industry, and then with each division he nailed down what the result of that focus would look like.  For example, the camera division had this simple statement as their focus:  Have no weaknesses versus comparable Sony and Nikon models and be superior on one or more important features.

Mitarai is still the CEO and today Canon is number one globally in printers, copiers and cameras.  He is the epitome of Jedi focus!  The lesson for all of us is clear.  Decide on THE key priority (not two or four; ONE), and apply laser-like focus until it is accomplished!

In an internal memo published in this week’s The Wall Street Journal, Nokia Chief Executive Stephen Elop, said the company “poured gasoline” on its “own burning platform.”

“Nokia, our platform is burning,” Mr. Elop wrote in the memo, which was reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. “It will be a huge effort to transform our company,” he adds.

Here is an example of a company badly needing to revise their vision to being the premier smartphone company that also offers cell phones via its separate cell phone division. That means they need to move from being primarily a hardware company to being a hardware, software and services company.

It’s the leader’s job to make that happen as fast and as effectively as possibly. They need a different kind of talent and they need to totally reorganize. All those things require real guts. I am sure there is tremendous push-back within the company given their past hardware success and an employee base that knows and prides itself in its big (but shrinking) cell phone business.

What’s the lesson? The courageous leader gets out in front of emerging trends, even if required to separately manage a going but aging business at the same time.

In developing the strategies, it is important not to allow the status quo to put a wet blanket on aggressive ideas. Hence, you are better off to assign the task to someone who is creative, a high achiever, and most importantly, not part of the part of the organization that is likely to change. Why, people are very protective of their turf. The creative, aggressive part is needed since it is too easy to select strategies that are not far from current practices; they are less painful to implement.

The leader then needs to expose the strategic options to the troops and debate the positives and negatives. Most importantly, the leader needs to be convinced that the strategies being considered will actually achieve the vision.

One other thing the leader needs to bring to the table is toughness regarding feasibility, cost and timing. Usually when plans are crafted, too much cushion to put into all aspects by the various parties concerned. You know why. They are protecting their career. They want their part to be safe and easy. This is human nature. The leader needs to squeeze some of that cushion out and create the sense of urgency.

It is now time for the leader to decide on the strategies, announce the plan and why it was selected. They should also announce who will be in charge and how the organization will be reorganized to achieve the strategies, and thus the vision. That’s how gutsy leaders lead!

A vision is what the organization wants to be or to have happen in the future. To select a vision, a leader needs to set up a reasonable amount of time to determine the problems and the opportunities via a set of analyses by a carefully selected group of knowledgeable, objective people. The people involved should be those that the leader is confident will challenge the status quo, not necessarily those that are in charge of how things are done today. Then the resulting learning should get whittled down to a set of viable alternatives. This should take a few weeks, not months.

After discussing the alternatives with the key people, the leader needs to make a decision and announce the vision, why it is being selected, and the next steps for determining the strategies to make the vision happen. Making those decisions requires guts. Some people will be disappointed, some threatened, but most will be very excited.

There are many examples in the marketplace of organizations getting run over because they did nothing but execute the current business. Why didn’t they manager do anything to improve? Because humans are generally wired to seek stability, and once they achieve it, they tend to lose their sense of urgency. In such organizations I will guarantee you that the troops are talking at coffee breaks about the problems and missed opportunities and wondering why nothing is happening.

As the boss, you need to be constantly analyzing what is going well and what isn’t, and seeking out fresh ideas and ways to do things. Put all that on the table, get input from the troops, debate possible directions with them, and then pick one. Announce the vision to your employees and start implementing.

So what is the message to any manager, no matter whether you organization is 4 people of 40,000: Execute your current responsibilities well but equally as important, always be seeking out problems to be tackled and bright ideas that will generate big improvement. Just remember: Gutsy leaders lead! Managers manage the status quo.