In 1676, Isaac Newton declared, “If I have seen a little further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” This statement has been historically interpreted as the achievement of intellectual progress that capitalizes on previous discoveries of other major thinkers.
Today, business leaders need to “see a little further” because of the relentless onslaught of change. Even businesses once considered too big to fail are facing pressure from homegrown, game-changing startups and foreign competition.
Working without a net
As a business leader – particularly the person at the top of the organizational chart – you need to be ever mindful of the bear traps and land mines that lie in wait for you. Just ask those previously in charge of Washington Mutual, Sharper Image or Planet Hollywood. The reasons for these and other epic business failures often distill down to irrational exuberance, faulty reasoning, poor strategic thinking and culture degradation. These things are controllable by the leader, yet too often go unrecognized because of a dismissal or miscalculation of reality.
You can’t get any bigger than your shadow
There is a better pathway to illuminating reality. Leaders, from U.S. presidents to Fortune 500 CEOs, have leveraged it. And so can you.
The two dominant resources a leader can use are mentors and business coaches. A mentor is frequently a role model who has “been there, done that” and can provide a protege with perspective and context-specific guidance.
Typically, a mentor is someone senior in age and experience, and may be involved in the same business or industry as is the mentee. This adds the element of an “insider” relationship, which can also create favorable door-opening opportunities.
Alternately, a business coach will generally have a well-rounded business background, and many have had CEO or management consultant experience. A business coach provides critical perspective, goal orientation, and helps in the discovery of win-win solutions, all within an agenda-free, confidential environment. And, for good reason, a business coach knows that the ongoing discussion is also a focus on the person, not just the organization.
Finding a mentor may be as easy as asking other well-connected leaders. Or, more private research can be accomplished on LinkedIn or with trade associations. A business coach can be conveniently resourced through LinkedIn or Google search, simply because these professionals tend to be more mainstream.
Lift up your game
In Robert Bruce Shaw’s book, Leadership Blindspots, he identifies the 20 most common unseen or misunderstood blind spots that plague business professionals. These fall into four areas of weakness: self, team, company and markets. The counter-measure to this is to be closer to where the action is, which means spending more time with employees and customers. But Shaw also advocates investing more time with industry thought leaders, particularly those with divergent viewpoints.
Professor Noreena Hertz, author of Eyes Wide Open, agrees. “When group members are actively encouraged to openly express divergent opinions, they not only share more (thought provoking) information, they consider it more systematically and in a more balanced, less biased way.”
By design, the most elegant model for professional development is the concept of executive coaching enriched by a peer group of talented and savvy business leaders. This encourages complete honesty with ourselves and others, where insight and change take place before the conversation has ended. (As an organization of CEOs, TEC has successfully operated by this business principle for nearly six decades.)
How fast can you create new knowledge?
The job of a CEO has never been more abstract or challenging. There’s more pressure than ever because of rapidly changing technologies, markets and workforces. Decisions need to occur faster. The risks can be higher.
The most enduring advantage to leaders who work with mentors is that they’re far better at interrogating reality, more likely to “see” the truth of a situation, and they’re better prepared to take the appropriate actions.
In business, good ideas (and actions) evolve from the cross-pollination of smaller ideas, which lead into something greater than themselves. If Isaac Newton were alive today, he might also agree that a higher order of perception checking and business collaboration is our way of seeing further by standing on the shoulders of giants.
-George Satula is an executive leadership coach working primarily as a TEC Chair, leading two CEO mastermind groups in southeastern Wisconsin (TECmidwest.com). He is also a speaker and leadership development consultant. He can be reached at (262) 786-7400 or gsatula@TEC BuildsLeaders.com.
