At a recent dinner with a long standing client she reflected on the pride she felt for what her team had been able to achieve over the last year. Under her stewardship they had realized a market leading position in a very competitive niche. I asked her what she felt drove their strong performance. I loved her answer.
In any endeavor, you get bombarded with more information than you can handle. If you try to focus on too much you’ll scatter your energy – and lose your effectiveness. To succeed, sort out major issues from minor ones. A client of mine uses a powerful tool to get at this idea.
The title is a quote by William McKnight, former CEO of 3M. It’s a powerful statement regarding the responsibility of leadership. However, it doesn’t go far enough in describing what great leaders do. There should be a second sentence. “If you don’t help people TEAR DOWN fences, regardless of how they got there, you also get sheep.”
One of my clients runs a fast-paced technology business. A frequent struggle of his is staying on course throughout the day. One process we implemented to help him is called “3 Things”. Each morning he uses it to determine the 3 significant tasks he’s committed to completing that day. If he strays, he uses it to pull himself back.
One of my clients, a successful 40-year veteran in the insurance business, is a master at using confusion to his advantage. 75% of what comes out of his mouth are questions to clarify something. It’s like watching an episode of Columbo. When we chatted about his style, he explained it this way . . .
Contrary to popular belief, your decisions don’t drive your long term success – your decisiveness does. Said another way, when you reach a crossroads on any issue, the act of choosing creates power, not the choice itself. One of the most common breeding grounds for indecision is to-do lists.
Last week a friend was venting some frustrations about an organizational culture change initiative at her company. She’d been working on it for 6 months and didn’t feel like she was getting much traction. When I asked her how much input she’d been getting from the executive team, she said very little. Then she started to defend them by saying they were too busy. . .
More than we’d like to admit, we all make things up as well go (often trying to give the impression that we’ve got it all together). It’s OK though – that’s life. And that’s not actually where our problems come from anyway. More often our problems come from that fact that we think other people actually know what they’re doing. It’s an illusion that’s wreaks havoc in our lives. . .
© 2024 The Sundheim Group. All Rights Reserved. | Privacy