Get fit to lead

Get Fit to Lead

 

You know I’m an evangelist around the whole idea of being ultra-fit if you want to be at your best. Getting into world-class physical condition is one of the smartest moves you can make. Exercising will make you look better, feel stronger and fill you with boundless energy. Staying fit will even make you happier.

 

The past week has been a time of great change for me. I’m reengineering my business to make it more focused and fast. I’m coaching my team so that they know the new standards and goals. I’m pushing myself harder to get more done and generate better results. And I’m lifting the bar on the size of my dreams. I need to make a bigger difference. I passionately feel that. As I go through all this, one of the practices that is serving me so well is my daily pilgrimage to the gym.

 

I remember a professional speaker name Peter Urs Bender once telling me: “Robing, some people go to church each day. Well, my church is the gym. And each day that’s where I go to get blessed”. I also remember a participant in one of my leadership seminars sharing: “Exercise is an insurance policy I’ve taken out on my health. And each that I go into the gym, I’m paying the premium”. Yet another personal told me recently at a book signing: “Good health is a crown on the head of a well person that only a sick person can see.” Smart points. Wise people.

 

No matter how busy I get or how much pressure is on my shoulders, a good workout makes me feel at ease. I come off the treadmill feeling relaxed, full of joy and with a sense of perspective over the issues on my plate. I get so many big ideas while I’m running and such clarity while I’m lifting weights. And staying fit keeps me happy and positive. I know I’ll never be Mr. Universe. But because I care for my health, my life will be a lot better, more productive and longer than if didn’t. And that’s good enough for me.

 

“Good health is a crown on the head of a well person that only a sick person can see”

 

The person who experiences the most wins

The Person Who Experiences Most Wins

 

I want the experience of an old man while I’m still young. And I think I’ve figured out a way to get it: collapse the timeline. Most people don’t take that many risks or have that many new conversations or read that many new books or take that many new travels. By engaging in these and other experience-building pursuits at a dramatically accelerated rate, I figure I could get 10 years worth of learning and lessons in quarter of the time. Just collapse the timeline by doing more important stuff faster and sooner. Just stay focused and committed. Just put more living into each of the days.

 

We all get the same allotment of time. Each of us get 20 hours each day. The sad fact is that too many among us spend too much time doing unimportant things. Living reactive lives. Saying “yes” to activities they should be saying “no” to. Drifting like a piece of wood in a river, moving in whatever direction the current happens to be moving on that particular day. All because they did not make the time to think. About their priorities. About their dreams and goals. And to note what they want to make of their lives. People have lost 20 good years this way. Seriously.

 

By getting clear on what you want out of life, you heighten your awareness around what’s most important. With better awareness comes better choices. And with better choices you’ll see better results. Clarity breeds success.

 

So don’t wait until the end of your life to become experienced. Collapse the timeline. Get clear on what you need to experience to have a fulfilling life – and then start doing it now. Meet cool people. Visit neat places. Read deep books. Seize opportunities. Fail often – it reflects an increase in your reach and risk taking. Who cares if you win or lose, so long as you get another experience to add to the inventory? Even the saddest of times make your life richer. Benjamin Zandler, the conductor of the Boston Philharmonic, shared the following line from his teacher’s wonderful book The Art of Possibility: “I’m so sorry for you; your lives have been so easy. You can’t play great music unless your heart’s been broken.” The more experiences, the better the life.

 

“I want the experience of an old man while I’m still young. And I think I’ve figured out a way to get it: Collapse the timeline”

 

Innovator's Mantra

The Innovator’s Mantra

 

True innovators have a mantra: “The enemy of the best is the good.” They are constantly daring to make things better. What others call impossible they see a probable. They live out of their imaginations – not their memories. They live to challenge the commonly accepted. They assume nothing. They see no limits. To them, everything is possible.

 

If you want to be a leader, I have a simple suggestion: Just keep innovating. Innovate at work, Innovate at home, Innovate in your relationships. Innovate in the way you run your life. Innovate in terms of the way you see the world. To become stagnant is to being to die. Growth, evolution and reinvention sustain life. Sure it can be scary. But wouldn’t you rather feel your fear than play small with your life?

 

There’s no safety in being the same person today that you were yesterday. That’s just an illusion that ends up breaking your heart when you get to the end of your life and realize that you missed out living it boldly. Lasting fulfilment lives out in the unknown. When I was a kid, my dad used to tell me: “It’s risky out on the limb. But son, - that’s where all the fruit is.” And to play out on the skinny branch, you need to innovate. Daily. Relentlessly.

 

Of course, the more you innovate and refuse to be bound by the chains of complacency, the more you will fail. Not every risk you take and not everything you try will work out as planned. That’s just life happening. Failure truly is essential to success. And the more you stretch, the farther you will reach. Failure is a gift anyway. Failure has been so helpful to me. It’s taken me closer to my dreams, equipped me with more knowledge and toughened me up so I’m more prepared. Success and failure go hand in hand. They are business partners.

 

One of the pharmaceutical giants GlaxoSmithKline’s organization values is “disturb”. Love it. Companies that don’t innovate don’t survive, so the key is driving this innovation. The lesion is especially important when things are going well. Though it’s counterintuitive, successful companies actually need to be more innovative than competition. It’s like kids playing king of the hill – everyone aims for the kid at the top. Leaders that don’t innovate are displaced by those willing to take risks. “So go to work each day and refuse to do the same thing you did yesterday – just because it was what you did yesterday. Keep challenging yourself to thing better, do better and better. Shape things up. Confront your limitations. Refuse to be average. Stand for what’s best. Commit to being breathtakingly great in all you do. And that’s what you’ll become. Sooner that you think.

 

“There’s no safety in being the same person today that you were yesterday. That’s just an illusion that ends up breaking your heart”

 

Make people feel good

MAKE PEOPLE FEEL GOOD

 

People do business with people who make them feel good. Human beings are creatures of emotion. We want to be with those who make us feel happy and special and cared for and safe.

 

There are two people I want to introduce you to: a farmer name Steve and Jake the variety store owner, two people who know more about business building than most CEOs. Steve sells pumpkins. I live in Canada, and every autumn the kids and I hop into our car and drive half an hour to get our Halloween pumpkins from this farmer who never seems to grow older. Sure we could get our pumpkins from the local grocery store five minutes from our home. But then we’d miss the feelings that Steve generates within us. He remembers our names. He makes us laugh. He tells us stories. He reminds us of what’s best in the world (farmers are good at that). And we drive away with a big batch of pumpkins and joy in our hearts. By the way, Steve’s business is unbelievably successful.

 

Next comes Jake. Jake runs a variety store. When the kids and I go in, he greets us by name. He knows our birthdays (records them in a little black book). Jake orders magazines like Dwell, Azure and Business 2.0 especially for me (no extra charge, of course). His manners are flawless. He always smiles. He makes us feel good. There are at least five other corner stores in our neighborhood, but Jake is a master at relationship-building. So he has our loyalty. Oh, and the guy’s a millionaire.

 

Being good is being wise. It’s a smart business strategy. So be like Steve. Model Jake. Make people feel good about doing business with you. You’ll lead the field. You’ll have fun doing it. And it’s just the right thing to do.

 

Makes me thing of the words etched on a slip of paper one seminar participant handed to me after an event a few months ago that read simply: “Do good and leave behind a virtue that the storm of time can never destroy.” I asked him who authored those worlds. His reply was brief: “the wisest person I’ve ever known – my grandfather”.

 

“Do good and leave behind a virtue that the storm of time can never destroy”

 

Culture is King

CULTURE IS KING

 

At a leadership program, one of the participants shared “At our company, one of our top priorities is to work on our culture. We talk about it all the time. Last year, our company grew 600%. Our focus on culture-building worked splendidly”. Impressive.

 

One of the most sustainable competitive advantages will be developing a culture of leadership. Competitors can copy the products, can copy the services, copy the branding but they can never copy the culture. And culture is the very thing that makes an organization special. An organization’s culture is what sets – and then drives the standards of behavior. The culture tells people what’s acceptable and important. Culture lets people know what organization values are. An organization culture states its philosophy, its mythology, it religion. Culture is King.

 

The five best ways to build culture are as follows:

 

Rituals: I like the cult in the culture. The best companies, like Microsoft, Google, Southwest Airlines, Apple and Wal-Mart have something in common with Cults. They have unique rituals like Ship room discussions, 7 am team huddles or Friday afternoon pizza parties to promote team bonding. Rituals shape culture and keep it special.

 

Celebration: John Abele, founder of the multi-billion dollar Boston Scientific, once told me over dinner that “you get what you celebrate”. Powerful idea. When you see someone living the values your culture stands for, make a public hero. Behavior that gets rewarded is behavior that gets repeated. Catch people doing good.

 

Conversation: Your people become what the leaders talk about; to get your vision and values into your people’s hearts, you need to be talking about that stuff constantly – at employee gatherings, at your weekly meetings, during your daily huddles and at the water cooler. You need to evangelize what you stand for constantly. In his excellent book Winning, Jack Welch said that he spent so much time evangelizing GE’s mission that he could call his people at three in the morning and – half asleep – they could re-state it (He never did)

 

Training: A mission-critical focus to build culture is employee development. If you agree that your organization’s number-one resource is your people, then it only makes sense to invest significantly in developing your number-one resource. Hold seminars and have leadership workshops to instill the values you seek to nurture and build a leadership culture into their hearts and minds. When your people improve, your company will improve.

 

Storytelling: Great companies have cultures where great stories are told from generation to generation. The story about how the company was founded in a basement or the story about how a teammate went the extra mile or the story about how the organization fought back to victory from the brink of disaster. Story telling cements a company’s most closely cherished ideals into the hearts of its people.

 

People want to go work each day and feel they are a part of a community. One of the deepest psychological needs of a human being is the need for belonging. We also want to work for an organization that values us, that promotes our personal growth and that makes us feel that we are contributing to a dream. Get these things right by creating a Culture of Leadership and you’ll keep your stars and attract others.

 

“One of the most sustainable competitive advantages will be developing a culture of leadership”

 

(these are not my thoughts J and are copied from Robin’s book)

 

(Note: Previous posts are available here: http://weeksthought.blogspot.com/)

 

Problems reveal genius

PROBLEMS REVEAL GENIUS

 

Problems are servants. Problems bring possibilities. They help you grow and lead to better things, both in your organization and within your life. Inside every problem lies a precious opportunity to improve things. Every challenge is nothing more than a chance to make things better. To avoid them is to avoid growth and progress. To resist them is to decline greatness. Embrace and get the best from the challenges in front of you. And understand that the only people with no problems are dead.

 

An unhappy customer yelling at you might seem like a problem. But to a person thinking like a leader, that scenario is also a giant opportunity to improve the organizations processes to ensure that doesn’t happen again and to get some feedback that may be used to enhance products and services. So the problem has actually helped to improve the company. Free market research.

 

An interpersonal conflict at work can seem like a problem. But if you think like a leader and use the circumstance to build understanding, promote communication and enrich the relationship, the problem has actually made you better. It has been fodder for your growth and served you nicely. Bless it.

 

An illness or a divorce or the loss of a loved one might seem like a problem. Indeed they are and very painful too. But the ones who are truly successful are shaped by their saddest experiences. They brought them depth, compassion and wisdom. They have given them self-awareness and they them what they are today. They wouldn’t trade them for the world.

 

Problems reveal genius. World class organizations have a culture that sees problems as opportunities for improvement. Don’t condemn them – learn from them and embrace them. World class human beings turn their problems into wisdom. They see opportunities & possibilities. And that’s what makes them great. Remember, a mistake is only a mistake if that is made twice.

 

“The only people with no problems are dead”

 

Burn your boats

BURN YOUR BOATS

 

Great achievement often happens when our back are up against the wall. Pressure can actually enhance the performance. Your power most fully exerts itself when the heat is on. Who you truly are surfaces only when you place yourself in a position of discomfort and you begin to feel like you’re out on the skinny branch. Challenge serves beautifully to introduce you to your best – and most brilliant – self. Please stop and think about that idea for a second or two. Easy times don’t make you better. They make you slower and complacent and sleepy. Staying in the safety zone – and coasting through life – never made anyone bigger. Sure it’s very human to take the path of least resistance And I’d agree it’s pretty normal to want to avoid putting stress on yourself by intensely challenging yourself to shine. But greatness never came to anyone normal. ( Mahatma Gandhi, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Mother Theresa, Thomas Edison definitely marched to a different drumbeat – thank God)

 

I’ve never forgotten the story of the famed explorer Hernand Cortes. He landed on the shores of Veracruz, Mexico, in 1519. Wanted his army to conquer the land for Spain. Face an uphill battle: an aggressive enemy, brutal disease and scarce resources. As they marched inland to do battle, Cortes ordered one of his lieutenants back to the beach with a single instruction: “Burn our boats”

 

How fully would you show up each day – at work and in life – if retreat just wasn’t an option? How high would you reach, how greatly would you dare, how hard would you work and how loud would you live if you knew “your boats were burning”, that failure just wasn’t a possibility? Diamonds get formed through intense pressure. And remarkable human beings get formed by living from a frame of reference that tells that they just have to move towards their goals.

 

“Challenge serves beautifully to introduce you to your best – and most brilliant – self”