I was talking the other day with one of my teammates here at Novell. He said to me, “Justin, I feel like I'm always on the defensive here. I can't get ahead of issues. I'm always reacting to what other people, and I can't keep up.”

“Sam,” I said (and the name has been changed to protect the innocent), “there are two ways to think about life here at Novell. You can either do unto Novell, or Novell can do unto you. Right now, you're letting Novell do unto you, and it's eating you up. There are too many agendas here. You need to have your agenda – what you want to get accomplished – and then you need to measure other people's requests against that agenda. You need to be confident in your ability to say 'no' to certain requests and more importantly you need to be able to help other people understand why your agenda is actually in their best interests.”

Sam & I shifted our conversation to discuss what his agenda might look like. We started to “plan the work,” so he could then “work the plan.” Yet this conversation was more than two weeks ago, and I still can't get it out of my head. I think the reason is that this question – “Either do unto Novell or Novell will do until you” – comes down to my one of my core philosophies on leadership.

If you're lucky, you work in a company where the people love their job and they are deeply invested in the company's success. After all, there are 168 hours in a week, and you spend 56 of them sleeping, 60 of them working, and the remaining 52 playing. So you're actually spending the majority of your life at work. (Or at least I am. But that's a sad commentary on my life that's a topic for another blog.)

If you're spending 36% of your life at work, you are obviously deeply vested in the success of that endeavor. And if you're that deeply invested, odds are, you have some thoughts on how your company will be successful. The challenge is that the other people with whom you work likely have their own thoughts on success, and you won't always agree. That's ok – hence the old saying “Two heads are better than one.”

People always ask me what are my criteria for hiring. My first answer is “I hire for aptitude and attitude. You need to be intelligent and driven – and you need to be a strong communicator. You need to convince people to follow you based on the power of your ideas, not because you control their paycheck.” In other words, I hire based on your ability to “Do Unto Novell” and your ability to take input from a multitude of sources, distill it down to an agenda that will make a difference (meaning “drive revenue”), and then help the rest of your teammates understand why this is the right path to follow. Otherwise, you'll spend your days chasing your tail trying to make everyone happy and eventually you'll wind up in my office frustrated, just like Sam.

I'm pretty sure that Novell is no different than any company, from the two-person start-up straight up through giants like IBM and GE. All that varies is the number of people you need to get on the same page. And that's not to say that your agenda will always be the right one, or that you'll have the answers. The best leaders have a plan of action, but are constantly evaluating it against other options and input to ensure that the current plan is the right plan. You need to balance running the trains on-time with the fact that sometimes you need to adjust the destination.

As for Sam, I'm hopeful that he left my office feeling better about his work and that he is now formulating his agenda. I'm looking forward to him showing back up in my office with his agenda, and I'm confident that he has the skills to collaborate with his colleagues to get them all on the same page, driving to the same destination. I'll keep you posted on how he does.