Jeff Dudley - Leadereliability: Where Leadership, Culture, and Profitability Collide

LEADERELIABILITY

Where Leadership, Culture,
and
Profitability Collide

JEFF DUDLEY

iUniverse LLC

Bloomington

LEADERELIABILITY

WHERE LEADERSHIP, CULTURE, AND PROFITABILITY COLLIDE

Copyright 2013 Jeff Dudley.

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ISBN: 978-1-4917-0169-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4917-0171-3 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4917-0170-6 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2013913888

iUniverse rev. date: 8/27/2013

CONTENTS

LeadeReliability is derived from an accumulation of my experiences during thirty-two years in the manufacturing sector of industry. My intent is to cause you to think differently about how you do things and to change the way you act based upon that thinking.

Life is an open book that I learn from every day; since leadership is all about sharing what you know with others, I want to pass learning and understanding on to you.

T he essence of effective leadership is the leaders capacity to enhance the performance and sustainability of the enterprise while engaging stakeholders with a vision and goals infused with hope and opportunity. Further, an effective leader is open to evaluating and adopting techniques and systems to advance his or her leadership agenda.

In LeadeReliabilty , Jeff Dudley, a talented leader and enlightened thinker, offers a well-grounded perspective and system that explains how organizationsthrough effective leadership in the service of a systematic, disciplined focus on reliabilitycan become more successful and ultimately sustainable.

This book is the product of a leader whofor more than three decadeshas practiced what he has preached regarding reliability. As a result, he has generated impressive results that are applicable in a wide variety of settingsfrom operationally intensive enterprises to more service-oriented ones. LeadeReliabilty is eclectic, refreshingly original, practical, organized, and engaging.

I take special pleasure in recommending this book to you. I believe in what Jeff has to say; as his longtime leadership advisor for many years, I have witnessed his personal growth as a leader. I take great delight in his passion for the relationship between leadership and reliability, which he has expressed so well in this book.

May you take pleasure in reading this book and benefit from the rich insights it has in store for you.

Myles Martel, PhD

president and CEO

Martel & Associates

Gulfstream, Florida

W elcome to LeadeReliability, a concept that will allow you to think about how you could do things differently to create a place for yourself or your organization where your results become much different than they are today. It will grow customer loyalty, create employee satisfaction, and allow you to create increased profits and increased margin if you are a business. If you are an individual, it will create time for you to be the person you want to be.

When you wander through the business section, self-help section, or management section of any popular bookstore, you will see many books on the topics of leadership, culture, and how to profitably run a business. But you will be hard-pressed to find any book about the relationship between any twolet alone all three. These three independent factors are essential for your organization to sustain the highest mode of performance. Without all three, your organization will be less than it could beand you will ultimately disappoint your stakeholders and yourself.

Since all three are critical, I hope to get you to think about the direct and indirect impact all three have on each other. What if you purposefully developed leadership in every person in your organization and created a unique culture that delivered significantly higher profitability? You would be talking about developing a culture of reliability; since leadership is essential to that reliability culture, I call it LeadeReliability.

I have thought about leadership and cultureand how they create profitabilityfor much of my thirty-two years in the chemical industry, but I have studied it intensely for the past twelve years. My professional experience as a global leader for a large corporation has given me a chance to test these theories and principles.

The culture of reliability is one of the key aspects of allowing your organization to perform at levels that you have never thought possible. Reliability is the answer to many of the problems that are plaguing your organization today. If customer loyalty, employee satisfaction, brand security, recognition, or profitability holds back you or your organization, starting the journey toward LeadeReliability will positively affect any or all of them.

What is reliabilityand why is it plaguing you or your organization? Reliability is not an initiative, but it becomes how you do everything that you do.

Initiative is defined as the power or ability to begin; to follow through energetically with a plan or task; determination of a beginning or introductory step; an opening move.

This is where reliability separates itself from the word initiative . A first move or something you start to resolve an issue is not my definition of reliability. Starting implies that there is a finish. Beginning suggests that something else will follow. Reliability is different. The fundamental premise is that reliability is not what you doit is how you do everything.

The journey toward reliability never ends and can always be improved. The start of the journey is just the beginningand it does not define what reliability is. As reliability develops it will become the way you do everything that you do.

It is not the start of anything or the beginning of something; it is a complete change of how you do everything. It is the way you become. If you are in an organization, then the entire organization changes how they do everything. Regardless of what change you are looking for, if you want to do something differentlyor drive an organization to change what it doesit starts with you.

Leadership books talk about what it takes to become a leader, but they never really talk about what it is you are leading. Leadership is an important part of reliability; it is so important that it requires every member of the organization to become a leader. Without leadership, you will never achieve LeadeReliability because it is so completely intertwined with reliability and therefore the name.

Much of what you will read in this book has been influenced by my personal application of these principles as a leader of large, global organizations and the various leadership books I have read. When I read, I search for what makes an individual different from others. I look for concepts and ideas I can use to improve the type of leader I am. I try to apply that new knowledge and refine it as I learn.