It takes many different qualities to make a great leader. Vision. Honesty. Integrity. Passion. Commitment. Communication skills. The ability to build relationships. And in today’s world of rapid-fire change, I also put flexibility at the top of the leadership attribute list.

The dictionary defines flexibility as “a ready capability to adapt to new, different, or changing requirements.” And nothing characterizes today’s business environment more than the need to constantly adapt to change. If you can’t readily adapt to new and often dramatically different circumstances, your organization will quickly get left behind.

Today’s leaders are confronted with three broad categories of change:

• Globalization. As our world grows smaller and smaller, the ability to think globally becomes paramount. Managers and leaders must become more innovative and proactive, anticipating problems and opportunities as well as entirely new markets and products that can spring up from anywhere in the world.
• Leadership styles. Today’s employees want to be led. They want to be motivated, guided and inspired, not directed and micro-managed. Most of all, they want to participate and engage in every aspect of their job. This requires discarding the old managerial approach of administrating and directing and adopting the new idea of guiding and inspiring.
• Increasingly diverse workforce. For the first time ever, the U.S. has four generations in the workplace, each with different attitudes, values, wants, needs, desires and expectations of work. The workplace is also growing more diverse in terms of race, ethnicity, gender and political and religious beliefs. Long gone are the days of “one size fits all” workplace policies. More than ever, managers and leaders need a variety of options with which to manage their workforce.

The bad news is that change is only going to get faster. Work will grow increasingly complex. And as more and more generation Y (currently ages 20 to 27) enter the workplace; it will become even more diverse. In the face of such relentless change, leadership agility becomes more critical than ever.

At the organizational level, leadership agility manifests itself in things like workplace flexibility programs. When you provide employees with options such as flexible hours, telecommuting and compressed workweeks, it gives them some control over their work environment while creating the sense of engagement they crave.

At the personal level, leadership flexibility is reflected in the attitudes and actions of individual executives. It involves keeping an open mind to new and different ways of managing people and work, and a willingness to unlearn old ways while embracing new ones. It also involves constantly testing your own assumptions and beliefs to see if they remain valid (if they’re even six months old, probably not).

The trees that survive a hurricane are those that bend with the wind rather than resisting it. Make flexibility part of your leadership skill set and your organization will find that it can ride out the winds of change no matter how strong they may be.

To learn more about workplace flexibility check out Holly Green’s keynote presentation at the Rady School of Management at UC San Diego, November 3rd, 2009.  Click here for more details!

We are pleased to have another guest blog, this time by Amy Rasdal, founder of Rasdal Associates, Inc. and Billable at the BeachTM.

Have you ever noticed how difficult it is to say “no”? Some people find it nearly impossible and end up with too many commitments. We’ve all done it at one time or another. Do you ever say “yes” and then regret it?

Most organizations struggle more with saying “no” than saying “yes”. Oddly enough it’s far more risky to say “no” than to say “yes”. What if you were the one who said “no” to the billion dollar idea? Isn’t it less risky to say “yes” to everything? Of course I’m exaggerating the point…

It is important to say “no” earlier rather than later because we’ve learned that to wait until something reaches a higher value stage and then abort due to lack of capacity means losing more money and time. You can obviously say “no” either explicitly or implicitly, because by not delivering you end up saying what amounts to “no”. Remember too that time is your one finite resource, and when you say “yes” to one thing you are inevitably saying “no” to another.

If we try to focus on everything we focus on nothing.

The Importance of Discrete Priorities

As a professional project manager, priorities are always an issue. Priorities should drive the tasks, due dates and critical path for every project. How often do you feel like you have too many top priority items? I work with (or force) my clients to develop a list of discrete priorities. There can only be one #1 priority. It doesn’t mean that you can’t do more than one thing but only one thing can be #1.

Once you establish discrete priorities you will be amazed at how quickly things start getting done. The entire organization falls into alignment with much less effort. You will realize that each member of the company makes several little decisions each day and these discrete priorities will appropriately direct each step.

If you don’t make decisions, decisions will make you.

A Challenge from Me to You

I’d like to challenge each of you to make discrete priorities. Force yourself to have only one #1. I’d also like to challenge you to say “no” on a regular basis. I promise things will fall into place more easily if you adopt these two simple philosophies.

About the author: Amy Rasdal has over 20 years of experience in Operations, Product Development, Corporate Development and Marketing. Amy Rasdal started her own company, Rasdal Associates, Inc. (www.rasdal.com), eight years ago. Rasdal Associates specializes in the other side of entrepreneurship – implementation and execution. Focus areas include program and project management for the Internet software and medical device industries. Ms. Rasdal also recently founded Billable at the BeachTM (www.BillableAtTheBeach.com) to give people a jump start in independent consulting.

It was tough making a choice about my blog topic this week. Do I write about what we are seeing in leadership in the world today or what we are not seeing; do I provide more tips on thriving in a tough economy; do I offer guidance or a checklist on engaging your employees and yourself to win…? or do I write about what my week was really all about?

On March 10th at approximately 7:30am I had a massive heart attack. Now to set the stage, I am a 46 year old female in pretty good shape. I eat right, work out and generally take care of myself (although some would say I work too much and too hard). I don’t have a lot of stress in my life other than the normal stuff most of us are dealing with on a daily basis. I am a Type I diabetic (which means I am insulin dependent) and have been for 30+ years. Heart attacks are always a concern for long term diabetics but you still don’t believe it will ever happen to you.

The ‘massive’ heart attack happened when I was walking up the stairs at a client site Tuesday morning. I got out of breath and felt a sharp but quick pain in my chest. As soon as I walked into the conference room I sat down for a few minutes and the pain as well as the shortness of breath went away. I just thought I was really out of shape since my travel has taken me away from consistent exercise for six months or so. I proceeded to deliver a three hour presentation and then have lunch with the group of executives. I felt fine and had plenty of energy.

I left the meeting, drove 30 minutes to a hotel, checked in, participated in conference calls and worked on client projects until dinner. I had a lovely dinner, a good glass of wine and went to bed early (about 9:30pm). I was tired but I had gotten up at 5am to drive to my earlier client site so it did not seem unusual to me.

At 11pm I sat straight up in bed and was hit with excruciating upper back pain. The muscles between my shoulder blades ached with a deep, dull feeling. I had been having the back pain on and off for three months but thought I had just injured some muscles working out. No sharp pains anywhere so I took ibuprofen and went back to sleep…until 1am when I awoke in almost unbearable discomfort again. Now I knew I could not just keep taking 2 ibuprofen every 2 hours, but I did take one more, pace around the room a lot because it hurt much worse to lie down and finally ended up sitting in a chair and falling asleep until 2am…when I was wide awake again with massive, but dull upper back pain and then… the vomiting started. I literally crawled into the hotel bathroom and stayed there for an hour or so…this lovely cycle continued until about 7am. At that point I called my client for the day and mentioned I would not make it. I showered, washed and dried my hair, ate a bowl of oatmeal and packed up. I departed the hotel at 9am and drove about 1 ½ hours back to San Diego straight to urgent care.

You may be wondering, “Why in the heck didn’t she call 911 during the night?” Well, back pain is generally not a life threatening condition. I was out of town and certainly did not want to get stuck in a hospital away from home. I stay in darn good health so could not imagine this was anything more than strained muscles that were just getting worse.

Upon arrival in San Diego, urgent care admitted me immediately, did an EKG and the doctor called 911 to transport me to the hospital. Within about three minutes of the doctor calling 911, my small room at urgent care was filled with nine or ten young, buff firemen ready to whisk me away. For a moment I thought I had died and actually gone to fireman calendar heaven. Ah, but my dream was short lived as I was whisked into the ER at the hospital, given nitroglycerine, hooked up to every machine available all while all my blood was sucked from me. I hung out in ER in between having dye shot in my veins, medications administered, more blood sucked out, etc. for about eight hours and then I was transported to the Cath Lab where three shiny new stents were inserted into my heart.

Then off to recovery and a flirtation with the ICU since my heart would not stabilize. Six long days later I was released with enough medication to kill a horse or to keep me around a few more years! The sharp pain with shortness of breath was my ‘biggie’. The three months of nagging upper back pain, multiple small heart attacks.

It has been a roller coaster ride filled with emotional and physical ups and downs. One thing so many people have said is “slow down.” But you know, this whole experience does not make me want to slow down. It does make me want to get more focused on what I contribute to who and when so I can do my darnedest to make it happen with whatever time I have left. It makes me want to suck everything I can out of what this world has to offer so I can give as much back as possible. It makes me want to make sure I am living in a way that my children will remember and be proud of. It makes me want to love my friends and family even more so there are no questions when I am gone.

I don’t think I’ll be slowing down, but I will treasure the moments more along the way and I will stay even more focused on doing what I love to do – supporting others in their success – because that is what keeps my spirits high and able to ride whatever roller coaster comes my way!

So, if you had a ‘biggie’, what would you do differently the next day? Anything?
What is it you keep putting off? What are you waiting for?
If you were gone tomorrow, what would you most regret? Can you do something about it now?

…and most importantly, what are you so passionate about that even a massive heart attack is not going to keep you away and what are you doing to make sure your life is filled with that passion?

Thank you for the cards, flowers, twitters, notes and other ways you have reached out over the past week or so. I deeply appreciate the incredible people I am fortunate to know and although I probably won’t stop running most of the time, I might just power walk every now and then so I can continue to support you and your success in whatever small ways I can for a little longer! Thanks for letting me!