“Leadership is ultimately about creating a way for people to contribute to making something extraordinary happen”-Alan Keith

Dick Nettel, an executive for Bank America’s Consumer Call Center, shows how a leader can seize the opportunities to bring out the best in others and guide them on the journey to accomplish challenging goals. He serves as a role model for leaders who want to achieve exceptional things.
In his organization people were disempowered and they described the organization as imprecise, failing, disorganized, frustrating, not fun etc. This was one of Dick’s ways to collect data and he also interviewed and listened to people for entire days.
Then Dick asked the employees to describe how they would like the organization to look like. People said, world class, a model for other to follow, true passion for customers. Based on this Dick started to craft a vision. (You can read the mission statement on p.5.)
Over the next 6 weeks Dick held 22 45-minute stat- of-the-center meetings with every team in the call center. He started the meetings with their vision and what they are committed to. Then he told them his story at Bank of America and the reason that he left that his true passion was to work with people to make a difference in their life.
When the employees heard his story they realize he was “a champion on their side(6).” He also made it clear in the meeting that changing the call was everybody’s business.
Then he held monthly town hall meetings, which concluded “Celebrating Heroes:” Dick and managers would recognize each other. Gave out medals that said PRIDE.
Second case talks about Claire, a founder of a consultancy business. She visions it to be everywhere and that it would have phenomenal reputation. Her motto is “the future is now”- Rather than waiting to run the business the way she thinks it should be run, she’s bringing it to life