Temptation
If we get 99% of our knowledge from 1% of the people that we encounter, that makes these 1% pretty special to us.
I met a lady at a business breakfast where I was speaking some years ago. Within five minutes of my leaving the platform, the stranger approached me and said:
“You need to amend the sequence of your business model”
“You need to change your logo”
“You need to write a book”
“You need to be speaking at a higher level”
Amazingly to me, I knew she was right on all four counts and I followed her advice. Sometime later when we talked about a joint business venture, it just didn’t hang together. We tried again recently and we were still talking at crossed purposes somehow.
The temptation is to be wowed by someone’s unique tacit knowledge and then to try to turn it into something else. Usually, but not always, it doesn’t work.
The Outsider
Some Senior Management teams have a collection of directors or partners that are all more or less focussed on the Bull’s Eye measurable statement of excellence for their organisation. All that is, except one.
They know what they ‘want to be’ in terms of exceptional products and service; they know ‘how much’ of it which is their collective ambition; they know ‘for whom’ which is the customers they need and those they don’t. And they know ‘by when’. All that is, except one.
There are three ways of looking at this world. First position is what I think, second position is what you think and third position is a ‘fly on the wall’ perspective.
The outsider always sees things from first position and that is their problem.
Balls
Everyone that operates at a high level in whatever sphere needs a mentor. This is certainly true in business. Some of the very best mentors are where you want to be; they are actually doing what you want to do. Therefore they stretch you into new areas of competence.
I was the keynote speaker at a national convention this week and my mentor had advised me to engage the audience more than I had planned for this particular event. On the day however, for one reason or another, I bottled it.
Towards the end of the day, the event planner gave me some positive feedback but then he said, “You needed to do more with the audience.”
Succession crunch
Dealing effectively with succession issues is more important than ever because of the contraction of the product / service life cycle. The model applies to just about everything, whether it is a committed relationship between two people or the rise and fall of the Roman Empire. The four stages of ‘start up’, ‘growth’, ‘maturity’ and ‘decline’ are simply happening faster than ever before.
Working with a food manufacturer recently, it was the father of this successful third generation family business that was advocating radical change. As Chair, his wise counsel was not being heard by his Managing Director son.
Their relationship seemed sound enough but they had never really talked about the things that really mattered; they had never really listened to each other. And suddenly, on a jugular issue, they needed to.
The lesson is this. In a global knowledge world, start your talking and start your listening early. Like now.
The best way of learning for CEO’s
In simple terms the better we learn, the better we grow. The better we grow, the better we perform. Talking to the senior partner of a top professional services firm I asked about her approach to personal growth.
She told me that she had stopped listening to all those self help cd’s, she no longer attended most of the very high powered, very expensive training seminars, she has stopped trying to read all the piles of knowledge and information spewed out by well meaning professional membership organisations.
In the last few years, time permitting, she has actually started watching a trilogy of television programmes. These are Alan Sugar’s The Apprentice, Master Chef and Strictly Come Dancing hosted by that remarkable octogenarian, Bruce Forsyth.
I asked her to tell me more. She explained that these three programmes all have one thing in common. They all require people to learn, grow, develop and perform under pressure, over time at the highest level. She added that the better she understands this process the better she performs as leader of her organisation.
How do you learn and develop best?
