Have you had the feeling?
You are at a great conference and have found yourself in the zone. The speakers are doing a great job of landing concept after concept and your notebook is bursting with insights and actions. You may even put some open circles behind those items so you can cross them off as you complete them.
Then you get back and somehow the urgency of your day job completely overwhelms those great intentions. Quickly those insight-filled items fade, and when you look back at them weeks later, you have to try hard to even recall what your own notes meant.
Why is this?
Well, it’s a matter of context. When freed from the urgency, you were able to connect more directly to the important, but not necessarily, urgent priorities. But once you’re back in the work environment and the context has shifted, your attention is back on the day to day.
The longer a firm is in business, the more resistance it has to change and grow. We humans are pattern-making machines, driving the same route everyday, buying the same mix of coffee, putting our pen down in the same place on the desk. We are creatures of habit – and for a very good reason. By performing these activities, we create consistent results.
The statistics are strongly asserting that we have an increasing tendency toward resistance and rigidity. According to Innosight, in the 1960’s, the average firm remained on the S&P 500 list for 33 years. That had narrowed to 24 years by 2016 and is projected to be 12 years by 2027. The upshot is that half the S&P 500 will be replaced in the next decade.
So in light of this: how can we step above the urgency of the day to day to get a start on those things that are important, but not urgent?
Integrating those Insights
Using the Complete Growth Leader as a framework, there are four key dimensions that need to be present to allow these observations and insights to come to fruition: Architect, Champion, Catalyst and Anchoring. I have outlined the Complete Growth Leader framework in previous posts (here and here).
Using this framework takes us to some very useful questions and insights:
Architect
This capacity is all about integrating and simplifying around the end clients’ real needs. Architects are really good at removing every distracting detail and forming maps that we all see as providing clarity and a way forward. So applying this question, how does your insight specifically improve the wellbeing of your client or customer? Secondly, how does it integrate with your internal business architecture?
Getting the answer to these two questions will inform your approach to moving forward with your idea. If the answer to the questions is not apparent, it may be time to put this insight into a holding pattern for a while.
Champion
The next capability is typically the role of working with your senior team to find enough resources to remove some risk and start validating your insight. The Champion does this by managing up well and asking questions like: What would this capability add to the business? Or, who can we partner or collaborate with in your network?
Catalyst
This is the role that earns lateral trust in the organization. There is a real skill in interacting with support teams who honestly may not have quite enough budget and be very short on resources. The catalyst has the ability to challenge them to be part of something bigger with the vision of the future that’s so compelling people want to help out. Questions that a Catalyst asks questions that build and align relationships. They position things like, “I know you are short staffed, but I’ve done all this paperwork so that we only need this, this and this to move ahead.” Or, perhaps horse trading around a recent favor.
Wrapping Up
Finally, none of this goes anywhere unless you are well regarded and anchored in your firm. Anchored individuals have gravitas based on being rooted and resilient long-term players that everyone knows has the firm’s best interest in mind.
Taking our insights and crossing them with this model can help you firm up real support that will outlast the brief emotional push that you can give when you return. One consistent coaching point that I share with clients is that the person with the clearest agenda, that meets the firm’s larger vision, always wins the day.
By doing this work at this level, you’ll gain insight and build your own career in the process.
If you’d like to move the insights from the notebook to the bottom of the P&L we should talk. Please call (847) 651-1014 or use this link to set up a 20-minute, (no-strings-attached) consult.
