Think You Know It All? True Professionals Learn Like Amateurs.

After almost 30 years of coach­ing CEOs to help them build and grow high­er per­form­ing orga­ni­za­tions, I still feel like an ama­teur, sometimes.

By ama­teur, I mean that there’s always so much to learn.

As I did at our recent annu­al team retreat in Whistler when we worked on our firm’s BHAG, and what it’s going to take to meet our three-year goal of 15 amaz­ing advi­sors to work with and sup­port our clients.

Why didn’t I think of that?

A lot of great dis­cus­sions, debates and brain­storm­ing took place, as dif­fer­ent mem­bers of our team – who each owned a dif­fer­ent piece of the agen­da – facil­i­tat­ed dif­fer­ent exer­cis­es, using notably dif­fer­ent con­cepts, tools and techniques.

Some exer­cis­es were com­pet­i­tive, some reflec­tive and thought-pro­vok­ing, some ener­giz­ing and oth­ers, just plain fun.

As we worked as one group or broke into small­er ones, we chal­lenged and cri­tiqued each other’s ideas, talked about accom­plish­ments, frus­tra­tions and lessons learned, reflect­ed and con­tem­plat­ed. We got strate­gic, gath­ered dif­fer­ent per­spec­tives on how we could refine and improve our Hedge­hog and fig­ured out the com­pa­ny’s most impor­tant KPIs.

There were many moments, as I watched each per­son on the team facil­i­tate these exer­cis­es, when I won­dered ​“Why didn’t I think of that?” or ​“Oh, I absolute­ly need to do that!”, and came away with a great list of new things to incor­po­rate into my work.

Blown away and hum­bled, I real­ized that no mat­ter how accom­plished we become, or how long we’ve been in the game, there’s always some­thing new to learn and improve – espe­cial­ly in an envi­ron­ment that val­ues all per­spec­tives and ideas.

“Vic­to­ri­ous war­riors win first and then go to war,

while defeat­ed war­riors go to war first and then seek to win.”

- Sun Tzu, The Art of War

Prepa­ra­tion is Everything

We also real­ized the val­ue of a lot of col­lec­tive, syn­chro­nized pre-work – whether for our com­pa­ny or a client – and its impact on an effec­tive strate­gic plan­ning ses­sion. And we could see that an advisor’s rela­tion­ship with the CEO of a com­pa­ny and our inter­nal sup­port team, sets every­one up to win, before we even show up in the room.

As a side note, although our retreat was spec­tac­u­lar, we also took note of things that were missed and what we could make it even better.

That’s what hap­pens when you strive for excellence.

The Chal­lenge

• How effec­tive­ly are you cre­at­ing an envi­ron­ment where team mem­bers can share their insights, tools and tech­niques for every­one to improve their craft?
• On a scale from 0 to 10, how mas­ter­ful is your prepa­ra­tion for your meet­ings and what do you need to get it clos­er to a 10?

Addi­tion­al Blogs

• Team Meet­ings, Debates and the Pow­er of Bowl­ing Balls
• 12 Tips for Bet­ter Busi­ness Meetings
• Do You Have a Debate or Deci­sion Deficit?
• Meet­ing Mas­tery for CEOs

Old­er Podcasts

• The Sev­en Mis­takes Lead­ers Make at Annu­al Strat­e­gy Meetings
• Fill Your Week with Strate­gic Meetings