Many times, I think it is easier to take something that is concrete and real, and use it to help us discuss and learn something that is abstract. Therefore, today we will use a jigsaw puzzle to help us describe and learn more about leadership.

With a jigsaw puzzle, you begin by looking at the picture on the top of the box. The picture reveals what the outcome of your effort will look like. It represents the vision for a company, and the pieces of the puzzle represent the people within the company. It is the leaders job to put the right people in the right place to fulfill the vision for the company.

A good vision must be the following:
• Compelling
• Challenging
• Not too difficult for the leader
• A clear picture
• A positive change
• A future focus

1. When you start out, you look for border pieces and most importantly corner pieces – To Frame the Vision.

• When a leader starts to form a company or a division, he must first decide what the company will be and will not be. This is framing or defining the outside borders or boundaries of the company and vision. 
• Once these people and pieces are in place, then the leaders is able to fill in the remainder with people within the boundaries and borders. 

2. The corners are the key, and many times you start with these pieces, as there are only 4 in a standard puzzle.

• These corner pieces do the connection between one part of the puzzle to the next. They are also the strength of the puzzle.
• In Leadership, the key leadership team that reports to the leader of the company are the corners of the puzzle. If these leaders are strong and hold their areas together and communicate with the other leadership, the vision can become a reality. 

3. It is harder to put the first pieces of the puzzle together than the last pieces of the puzzle.

• With the first pieces, you have so many pieces to choose from and you really don’t know where to start. However in the end, you will have one piece of sky missing or one piece of grass missing and you know what you are looking for. Also in the end, you know what shape the others that surround that piece will accept. 
• In leadership, when you start a company, division, or department it is harder than in the later stages of the company. With a new company or division you have some many things to do, you don’t know where to start. There are so many people you need and you just can be overwhelmed by the task. 
• But as you put 1 person in their right place and then connect another person to them, small sections of the vision start coming together, thus you begin to gain momentum. 
• However, once most of the people are in place and you are missing just one person from a team, you first need to look at the exact shape or characteristics of the person you are looking for. You do this by looking at the surrounding team and determine what will be the best fit. Then you are able to find that exact piece or person.

4. With complicated puzzles, you try and group the pieces by color before starting to place them together.

• In leadership we do the same thing. We must determine what a person’s strengths and weaknesses are before we can place them. Then after we put them in the correct area – Finance, Support, Property or Services we are able to better place the person. 
• When people are not sorted by strengths and weaknesses, when a position becomes available, then the leader wastes time and effort searching all of the pieces or all of the people to find the right one.

5. The right person in the right place makes the “fit” between people smooth and “snapped”.

• When you have a brand new puzzle, many times the pieces put in the right place, “snap” into place and make a good sound. The fit between pieces becomes smooth and you almost are unable to recognize where one piece stops and the other starts. 
• In leadership the same principle holds true. The right person in the right place is referred to as a “good fit.” Almost immediately when the leader places the right person in the right position, the others around him quickly make the new person feel as part of the team as the team needed his skills and talents. 

6. The leader must enjoy putting the right pieces in the right places.

• Growing up, my grandmother would love to do puzzles, especially when it was cold outside in the winter. We would get a card table and put it up in front of the TV and work on the same puzzle together for days. We enjoyed putting the puzzle together as a team, and took enjoyment of making the picture that was on the top of the puzzle box. 
• Leaders must take enjoyment in putting people in the right positions for the employees to be successful and then the company to be successful. The only way leaders are successful and a vision is realized are if the leaders learn, relate, and develop each employee. Leaders who enjoy this will be successful, and leader who don’t, will not be successful. 

7. If a puzzle piece does not fit, it does not mean you throw it away. Every piece is different, special and fits somewhere in the puzzle.

• To complete a puzzle’s picture or a company’s vision you must have all of the pieces in the right place. A picture without all the pieces is incomplete and does not tell the full story. A company that does not complete the full vision of a company is not a successful company. 
• The challenge to every leader is to find out each person’s strengths and weaknesses and put them in an environment where they can be successful. Every person who has a positive attitude, positive work ethic, and positive values can be used by the leader some place within the company’s vision. 
• The leader learns, relates, and develops each follower for a position within the company. 

8. Sometimes if you are not careful, you can have a puzzle piece from another puzzle that gets mixed in with your puzzle pieces.

• This puzzle piece is designed to make another picture when the puzzle is complete, not the picture you are working on. So no matter where you try to place this puzzle piece, it will not fit anywhere and is a waste of the leader’s time. 
• In Leadership, you will have people who you might find in your division or company that belong in another company. They do not share the same vision as your company and these employees need to find another company to work for. 

9. The pieces that have special features and are different than the rest of the pieces are easiest to use.

• You know just by looking at the piece and knowing the picture where that piece fits. However, where there are pieces that are not special and do not have special attributes then these pieces are hard to place (like blue sky pieces where there is a lot of blue sky). 
• In Leadership, when we find someone with a special skill or talent that we know that we will need, it is easy to place that person in the organization. These are people with a technical background or experience in a similar company doing similar tasks. 
• However, what is hard to place is the raw and undeveloped people that do not have special skills or special experience. Many times a leader will try many different places to find the right fit for these people. This is why our internship program is very important. It allows untested and inexperienced people to see lots of different areas to find their interest, their passion, and their place in the company. 

10. Puzzles are different based on their level of difficultly. What determines the difficulty is the number of pieces. The more pieces the harder the puzzle.

• Leadership is the same thing. First the leader must be able to lead themselves. Second, after they are successful doing that, they begin to lead others, and the more people they lead the greater the level of difficulty. So lead yourself first (1 person - you), then lead a group (10 people), then lead a division or company (100 people), then lead a large company (1000 people) …
• If you try and start with leading 100 people and you do not even lead yourself well, you will fail. 

11. Wrong pieces in the wrong place hurt people.

• A puzzle piece is meant to fit in only one place in the puzzle. However, if the leader decides to “make the piece fit,” the corners of the piece being placed and the pieces surrounding are bent and hurt. And then after these pieces are bent, they are less able to receive the correct piece that was actually made for the spot. 
• In leadership, many times we place people who do not have the skills or abilities in a place because of necessity or carelessness of the leader. When this happens, it hurts not only the person we have wrongly placed in the company, but also the people surrounding this person. A wrong person in a wrong position puts undue pressure and work on the people around them. 

12. From far away, you do not see the individual puzzle piece; you just see the picture the completed puzzle creates.

• As the leader is focused on putting the pieces or people into the correct places, it forms a picture. As more and more of the puzzle’s picture is revealed, observers are able to see what picture the puzzle is making. As the puzzle becomes more complete, the picture becomes clearer from farther and farther way. After the picture is complete you are able to stand far enough away from the puzzle and not see the puzzle pieces. 
• This is just like in a company, from a distance you do not see individual people in a successfully company, you just see the overall vision of the company and what the company represents as a whole. 

So as we close this lesson today, I challenge you with one question.

What kind of piece of the puzzle are you going to be? Are you going to be the piece that does not get along with the people around you?

1. Find your place in the vision
2. Understand that each person is important and needed for the vision.
3. Lead yourself well first, then lead others. And as you lead others try to understand where each person can best be used. 
4. Work at becoming a special piece of the puzzle, with special skills and special experience that make everyone in the company know where you fit. 

Lead On,
Sutton