I am truly a fortunate woman. Where I live, the land is rich with CEOs in many different fields. I have several interviews with some top notch folks, yet Randy Mills stands out. He has led billion dollar companies, has a passion for family, flying, even pickleball, and warmed my heart with his leadership, knowledge, and comments. I trust he will forgive me as I summarize his thoughts.
What Is Leadership
“The Process of translating the vision of better into reality by recruiting and aligning the efforts of others.”
Leadership is NOT
- Esoteric
- Mystical or Cryptic
- Management
- Supervision
- A Title or a Position
- A personality or a characteristic
- For the Chosen few
Truths About Leadership
- Anyone can lead.
- Leadership is a process.
- The Process can be broken down into steps.
- Leaders can learn and practice to do these things better.
Leaders Do 4 Things
Awareness – Understand the Current State
- Collect — Leaders seek and collect data from diverse perspectives to develop an understanding of the interrelated dynamics of the people, places and things within their operating environment.
- Validate — Leaders seek truth and validate sources and reject opinions or beliefs as a substitute for knowledge.
- Contextualize — They distill data into relevant information and contextualize it with understanding that a better future is possible.
Vision – Set Direction for a better future.
Leaders paint a vivid picture of a better future state.
- Target — They verify their vision is supportive of the overall mission and they know what good is like.
- Form — With imperfect information and divergent viewpoints, they create a vision with progressively increasing clarity.
- Sharpen — Leaders confidently prototype and test their ideas across diverse audiences learning from feedback and strengthening the vision.
Performance – Use Objective measures to measure success.
- Prioritize stated vision over individual success.
- Own – they commit to and are not distracted from the agreed upon goals and take ownership
Team – Build and align a team to the vision.
- Recruit – They evangelize to recruit top notch talent and select individuals with both ability and passion for the role. They coach members to work as part of a high trust team with the ownership and autonomy to deliver results.
- Optimize — They get the most out of a team and its members, ensuring both perform to standard s and value and make changes when necessary
How does Dr. Mills’ view of Leadership match yours?
About Dr. Mills
from his LinkedIn Bio — read more
Dr. Randy Mills is a transformational leader whose work has shaped biotechnology and improved lives. Technologies Dr. Mills invented throughout his career have been used in the treatment of over 10 million patients. He is also an avid pilot.
Throughout his career Randy has generated significant economic growth, taking three companies public resulting in over $1 billion in shareholder value. As CEO of Osiris Therapeutics (Nasdaq: OSIR), he commercialized five cell therapy products responsible for $1.5 billion in cumulative sales and led the company through an IPO that increased shareholder value 41-fold. He co-founded Aziyo Biologics (Nasdaq: AZYO) to develop next generation biological devices. Starting out, the subject of his graduate research, BioCleanse, became the core technology that launched Regeneration Technologies (Nasdaq: RTIX).
