What are the top three things your company covets right now? You may have answered: money, money and money. But, of course, these are outcomes; they’re not something you can manifest yourself. So we’ll rephrase the question: What are the top three behaviors or qualities your company covets that will drive better results (which will deliver more money)?

In desperate times companies crave 1) forward momentum, 2) employee confidence, and 3) team members with the ability to see, create and seize new opportunities. Yet, despite knowing this wish list, does it surprise you to know that many companies sabotage the elements they need to survive?

It’s a huge and smelly elephant sitting in the office: Many managers slip to the “boss mentality” and create an environment of pressure, fear, and anxiety. “Our margins are shrinking – so we’re cutting everything.” “Where are we bleeding the most?” “Who’s made these stupid mistakes?” “This will get worse before it gets better.”

How do these messages make you feel? I doubt anyone is jumping up and down with excitement and suddenly feeling super creative and confident.

Effective leaders know better. These masters aren’t ignoring the numbers; they’re not using a strategy of hope or being unrealistic about economic conditions. They simply know that emotions determine how people act.

Do you want to lead those around you? Ask these and other questions to create a focus that helps your team create what they want most:

1)    Forward momentum: What strategies are delivering for us right now?

2)    Employee confidence: What experiences do we have that prove we will succeed?

3)    Create opportunities: How can we deliver even more value today?

Success is a result of focus. What questions will you ask your team to ensure they create what they need the most?

Where will you lead – where will you stomp elephants – today?

A friend shared that the company they work for is downsizing. They’re telling the remaining employees, “You’re going to have to work longer and harder, and get paid less.” And to make sure they really created more stress, they added, “And you’ll have to apply for your job every day.”

And if the employee doesn’t like it? “Tough. You can leave – and good luck finding a job.”

That’s one, big, hairy elephant standing in the way of a company realizing breakthrough success: Fear management works in the short term – maybe 21 minutes. And then after that: Employees begrudgingly do just enough to keep their jobs – and no more.

Fear management is ugly management that makes your stomach turn – and it’s not effective.

Gone are the opportunities where this company could get the coveted “discretionary effort” from employees. Gone are the creative solutions necessary to finding new ways to win in the “recalibrating economy.” Gone is the heart and soul of the company: Employees who care so much they identify with and work harder for the organizational and cultural brand.

For those managers who have marginal leadership skills, it can be awfully tempting to resort to fear-based management. When they do they’re telling the world: I don’t have the ability to lead any other way, other than through force and manipulation.

What these unskilled managers don’t realize is that they undoubtedly have one competitor who is doing the opposite – and therefore kicking their butt. Effective organizations know that more than ever employees are hungry to deliver excellence. In these companies they’ve transformed the “fight so you don’t lose” mentality into “fight to ensure we win.” The different results these two approaches create are striking.

How will you lead today so that those around you know you’re fighting for them? The more you do this, the more you create a culture where the sum is exponentially greater than the parts.

Recently I had a conversation with Sergio, the President of a company in Peru. When asked about what he had to accomplish in 2009 he answered, “We have to do business as usual in a very different way.”

Sergio is a gifted leader who understands something many leaders miss: If you’re going to succeed in 2009, the word “usual” must be synonymous with “different.” The leaders who can effectively develop this wisdom in their teams will win.

Standing in the way of this critical mindset shift is a big, hairy elephant. Most people prefer routines. When elements and variables are constant, it creates the illusion of security. But more than ever, “status quo” means “no go.” Therefore, how does “change” become “business as usual”?

One of the primary reasons your company can have a competitive advantage is because most other organizations will sabotage their best efforts: They’ll push their leaders “to communicate more.” They’ll use the “blah-blah-blah” telling method of preaching why people must shift their paradigms and change how they approach their job.

The only change this creates is an increase in resentment the masses have for their supervisors.

The mindset shift happens when the people doing the work get to experience the need for achieving the shift. You can accomplish this new understanding by:

1. …regularly building confidence in others by celebrating achievements – and asking them why what they’re doing is working.
2. …pushing change out to where it needs to happen: the front line. This is done by asking for people’s ideas on the spot, the moment change is needed.
3. …by tapping into and leveraging motivations. People have strong reasons for wanting to succeed. Give them a chance to satisfy those reasons, and…

…you guarantee that “business as usual” will always different.

There are a lot of people dreaming right now. January marks the point for setting a course in the New Year. What is it you want to achieve? What do you want to do? Become?

Here’s some important advice: Don’t follow your dreams. 

Last year a big, hairy elephant stood in the way of millions of dreams. And he’s ready to trample your dreams for 2009 if you’re not careful. There is a better way.

Don’t follow your dreams – because following anything doesn’t guarantee you’ll get there. How many people set lofty aspirations – only to become sidetracked or disillusioned? “It wasn’t what I really wanted to do anyway,” they rationalized. Or, “That dream was ridiculous. Did you hear what would have been expected of me?”

So they go back to living the life they lived before. And there’s nothing wrong with that…unless you want to improve the life you lived before.

If you’re serious about achieving anything in 2009 don’t follow your dreams – drive your dreams. Bring a level of determination and control and commitment and passion and excitement that leaves little doubt change is what you’re about. 

Drive. Don’t follow.

Following dreams relegates people to never-ending analysis and the search for the perfect plan or method to achieving dreams. And because they follow dreams, they’re susceptible to following the next good idea that comes along. And the next. And the next…which gets them nowhere.

This year, ensure success by: 

1. Setting the vision/dream;
2. Choosing the strategy;
3. Then driving the strategy – consistently.

There is no secret strategy, no hidden code that creates success for some – while others languish in dream purgatory. The difference lies in the execution, in choosing to follow a dream – or drive it.