Creatives know that copying someone else's work is uncool. It may also be illegal, but to a true Creative that's far less important than the lack of ethics displayed by a copycat.
When it comes to leaders, you shouldn't copy either, but for different reasons.
When you take business classes, when you read books on leadership, and when you talk to your peers, you're going to be exposed to plenty of examples based on other people's experiences. You'll also hear lots of broad-based lessons, or fundamental principles that may help you. But you can't just take other people's experiences or a bunch of generic concepts and plug then into your firm and expect the same results. You're different from them, and your employees are different from theirs.
The trick is to take those ideas you think are useful and figure out how they apply to your situation. This means you can't just study leadership; you also need to study your firm. Also, as you try to implement the lessons you learn, realize that you may need to adjust as you go along. Be open with others about what you're trying to accomplish so you can get their feedback. What sounds like a great idea in the classroom may not be so great in the office.
When I was in Afghanistan in 2007, mentoring the faculty at a university in Kabul, they made it clear they wanted to adopt the structure and curriculum of a top American university as their own. I carefully pointed out to them that most of their faculty only had a bachelor's degree and they had very few textbooks written in Dari. Plus, universities in the US aren't dealing with an insurgency that threatens the country, and American students aren't worried about whether their village back home has been attacked. The differences between the two environments are just so different that taking an American style and plugging it into an Afghani university would be insane. And so, we found a happy medium: a curriculum and faculty structure that improved their capabilities, but in a way they could actually achieve.
My travels in Asia the last week have revealed a lot of interest in Western styles of leadership, especially the evolving ideas about how to lead in a knowledge economy. What I've suggested to these young, emerging leaders is that they not try to just copy the American style of doing things. What we do in the US doesn't necessarily work in Hong Kong or Thailand or Singapore...or even in Canada or England You need to consider the context in which you're trying to apply these lessons, and part of that context is the culture in which you, your employees, your peers, and your bosses were raised. People can't just shrug off years of culturalization simply to meet the demands of a new book on management practices.
Yes, you need to learn, but more importantly, you need to learn how to make it work.
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