This Is Day One by Drew Dudley

Author:Drew Dudley
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hachette Books
Published: 2018-08-20T16:00:00+00:00

One Day vs. Next-Day Leadership

“Thirty-five years he worked to get away from the office, and now he can’t stop talking about it,” Camille said in a mock angry tone.

I was back in the lounge car a few hours later, having a drink with Camille and her husband, Albert. While I was making the trip at the age of thirty-two, Albert and Camille had been putting it off for almost that long. Albert had started a public relations company in his late twenties and building, growing, and maintaining it had eaten up more than three decades. They wasted no time after his retirement, however: less than a week had passed since his final day at the office and they were already three days into their long-awaited trip.

Inspired by my interaction with Allison, I’d bought a couple glasses of wine, introduced myself, and asked if I could join them. It wasn’t long before Albert was sharing stories of his time as president and CEO, and before we knew it two hours had flown by, prompting Camille’s gentle reminder that perhaps a change of subject was in order.

“All right, all right!” I laughed. “One more question and then nothing more about work.”

Camille shot me a fake stink eye, then nodded her agreement with a poorly concealed smile.

“What’s the most important leadership lesson you took away from all of those years?” I asked Albert.

“I learned the ‘two days of leadership,’” he replied.

My quizzical look led him to explain.

“I worked for thirty-five years in PR,” he said. “And I came to realize that sometimes it was about building a brand and sometimes it was about saving a brand. When you’re building a brand you have a plan, and for the most part you’re in control of how and when it’s executed, but there’s always a crisis eventually. Someone does or says something stupid, or something fails that wasn’t supposed to, or any one of a million things goes wrong to throw you into damage control. You can do your best to plan for those moments, but control is rarely in your hands once they start unfolding.

“Leadership is the same way,” he continued. “I came to think of it as the ‘two days of leadership’: one-day leadership and next-day leadership.”

“What’s the difference?” I asked.

“‘One-day’ leadership is strategic leadership,” he said. “It’s the vision of where you want to be ‘one day,’ the timeline for when you want that day to arrive, and the creation of the plan to take you there.”

“So, it’s your vision and mission,” I chimed in.

“Yes, plus the strategic objectives, timelines, measures, and targets you create to take you there,” he said with a nod. “‘Next-day leadership,’ on the other hand, goes into action when crisis necessitates simplification. It means assessing a lot of information in a short time and quickly discarding the nonessential to get to the essential. It’s letting go of the hope of achieving ‘the best’ and focusing on ‘the best we can do at present.’ That’s where the name comes from: it’s simply about getting you to the next day.

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