Peter J. Boni - All Hands On Deck

Praise for All Hands On Deck:

Peter Boni has distilled his long experience and hard-won wisdom into a good read, a useful educational tool and a sensible framework for disciplined day-to-day execution. He breaks the big job of leading successfully into bite-sized chunks that any conscientious leader can execute.

Alfred R. Berkeley III, Chairman, Princeton Capital Management, President Emeritus, NASDAQ Stock Market, Inc.

All Hands on Deck is an interesting, informative and real-life look at organizational situations going off course and the opportunities that are available for the intrepid entrepreneur/leader to move forward in spite of seemingly insurmountable odds Peter Boni captures the spirit of the risk-taker in unchartered waters. His own experiences and the stories he documents are instructive and inspiring for entrepreneurs/mangers/leaders dealing with inevitable change, adversity and yet, determined to find opportunity and move forward.

J. Thomas York Jr. (AKA Tucker), Managing Director of The Goldman Sachs Group

Listen up my hardys, these ABCs may very well put your team in the most favorable winds. This is all about clear principles that work in both stable and trying timesskills welcomed by any organizations board. A good read.

Ken Daly, President and CEO of The Association of Corporate Directors

All Hands on Deck provides the reader with authentic and candid stories by inspirational leaders who have transformed businesses, nonprofits and academic organizations. A must read for those who value an introspective appraisal by leaders on their journey in navigating adversity and crises, while being humble enough to share their flaws in decision making and lessons learned.

Lorraine Lavet, Senior Client Partner, Korn Ferry

Navigating Your Team Through Crises, Getting Your Organization Unstuck, and Emerging Victorious

Peter J. Boni

Copyright 2015 by Peter J. Boni

All rights reserved under the Pan-American and International Copyright Conventions. This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, in any form or by any means electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system now known or hereafter invented, without written permission from the publisher, The Career Press.

ALL HANDS ON DECK

EDITED BY JODI BRANDON

TYPESET BY EILEEN MUNSON

Cover design by Jeff Piasky

Printed in the U.S.A.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Boni, Peter J., 1945

All hands on deck : navigating your team through crises, getting your organization unstuck, and emerging victorious / by Peter J. Boni.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-60163-372-9 -- ISBN 978-1-60163-380-4 (ebook) 1. Leadership. 2. Teams in the workplace--Management. 3. Organizational effectiveness. I. Title.

HD57.7.B646 2015

658.4022--dc23

2015008945

To all my teams who courageously
manned the decks
with me in stormy seas.

Section I:
The Greatest Captain of Them All

Section II:
The ABCs to Advance

Section III:
Stories of the ABCs to Advance in Action

In the For-Profit Sector

In the Nonprofit Sector

How do career opportunities, both at junior and senior levels, get created?

One factor is an organizations growth; thats when a need for new skills and talent emerges. Another is attrition due to promotions, moves, or perhaps a new boss installing a loyal team. But a third factorwhen something (internally or externally) gets messed upoutnumbers all others in frequency by 10 to one. Opportunity knocks.

When a ship runs aground, the captain has to get the ship moving to kedge offa sailing term for getting it off the mud, sand, or rocks. Like ships, organizations run aground, too, and competition for the captains role thins out.

Why? It takes both knowledge of how to kedge off and the guts to do it. Those with an Ivy League pedigree or an inside track might stick with less dramatic roles. Yet if youre up to the challenge, consider this grounded situation a chance to advance your organizationand your career. Thats exactly the tack I took. With the knowledge and guts required, your story of career advancement can follow mine.

How? Thats what I addressed in this book, All Hands on Deck: Navigating Your Team Through Crises, Getting Your Organization Unstuck, and Emerging Victorious. While explaining my success as a repositioning artist, it provides the strategies and tactics for you to kedge off fast. Its principles apply no matter your age, your level on the totem pole, or your field: business, education, government, military, medical, nonprofit, or athletics. Following these principles, you not only learn to anticipate and overcome obstacles, youll avoid needlessly running aground altogetherboth in work and in life.

I admit, I had an edge. A lifelong calculated risk-taker, Id always had an entrepreneurs mentality. In college, I had taken a shine to studying group dynamics so I could combine the right ingredients and lead high-performance teams. Even more important, I had earned field credits for a Rice Paddy MBA in leadership through adversity on a full scholarship courtesy of Uncle Sam. (After slogging through Vietnamese and Cambodian jungles, I coined the term for my Rice Paddy MBA.) After 15 months in combat as a U.S. Army Special Operations infantry officer, I took leadership lessons from my life-altering military experience into the corporate world. There, I advanced by taking on situations that had run aground. Doing so enabled me to realize my goalto become the VP of a Fortune 500 firmwithin a decade of returning from Southeast Asia.

It took me eight years to attain that coveted goal; it took another two to deem it a lousy job for me. Although I felt successful in the VP slot, I found myself confined to a box. I wanted to color outside the lines. I was impatient. I craved more. How was I going to make the jump to a high-technology CEO?

Fortunately, I got my first chance to kedge off as a CEO at age 36.

I drew on my earlier career success and found something on its last leg: a failed startup telecommunications company. It had sound ).

My first CEO assignment was deemed a success. Revenue grew and the company earned Inc. 500 recognition. It later achieved an IPO, continued its growth, and was acquired by Cisco Systems. That assignment led to my heading several technology companies (public, private, IPO) in various stages of growth, maturity, trouble, and renewal. These firms were recognized among the Inc. 500 five times, the Software 100 three times, and the Fast 50 and the