The Great Jim Collins & Thinking Time

A few weeks ago, our team and a num­ber of clients had an amaz­ing expe­ri­ence at Jim Collins’ Good to Great Team Work­shop at Navy Pier in Chicago.

A spe­cial shout-out to Karen and the team at The Growth Fac­ul­ty for mak­ing this happen.

A Mas­ter at Work

There’s noth­ing like see­ing a mas­ter at work: from his amaz­ing research about build­ing great, endur­ing com­pa­nies to his pre­sen­ta­tion style, to facil­i­tat­ing amaz­ing dis­cus­sions with one per­son, an exec­u­tive team or a big audience.

The great­est val­ue, for me, is his abil­i­ty to cre­ate an envi­ron­ment that fos­ters very potent think time. Dis­cus­sion with peo­ple around me, as Collins walked us through some of his key prin­ci­ples, and my own con­tem­pla­tion helped to cre­ate some valu­able insights that relat­ed to my firm and to the clients we work with.

Pecu­liar Leadership

One of our most insight­ful dis­cus­sions came when we were prompt­ed to talk about our pecu­liar lead­er­ship artistry: what makes us high­ly effec­tive and how we could be better.

Pecu­liar, adjec­tive

dif­fer­ent to what is nor­mal or expected

par­tic­u­lar; special. 

belong­ing exclu­sive­ly to. 

— Oxford Dictionary

My dis­cus­sion group includ­ed some­one I’d nev­er met and my son Bray­den, who moved into a lead­er­ship posi­tion in the past year.

We talked about our pas­sion for our work and how it con­nects to a greater pur­pose, about help­ing oth­ers move towards great­ness and, from my son, about lead­ing by exam­ple doing his best, hav­ing a strong work eth­ic and treat­ing peo­ple with respect.

As we shared insights and infor­ma­tion with each oth­er, I real­ized three things:

1. That I see poten­tial for fur­ther great­ness in peo­ple, and lead or push them towards things that are mul­ti­ple times greater than where they are today
2. That I nat­u­ral­ly enjoy try­ing to solve the hard­est chal­lenges that peo­ple face and have both the con­vic­tion and courage to work them through.
3. That I can get peo­ple to make tough commitments.

An Epiphany

My epiphany was that I can do a bet­ter job of con­tin­u­al­ly rein­forc­ing, with my team, my pas­sion for the work we do that con­nects to our pur­pose, the val­ue we bring and the impact we have on our clients, who, in turn, do amaz­ing things.

That some­times gets lost when I am so busy.

The Chal­lenge

• Think about what pecu­liar­i­ty makes you high­ly effec­tive, as a leader
• How might you, or one of your team mem­bers, can either rein­force some­thing you already do or try some­thing dif­fer­ent to be more effective?

Addi­tion­al Blogs

• Pre­serve Your Strate­gic Think­ing Time
• Spa­tial Dis­ori­en­ta­tion: When You Think You’re Mak­ing the Right Decisions
• How to Teach Peo­ple to Think for Themselves
• Over­come Neg­a­tive Think­ing by Learn­ing to Love the Lessons

Old­er Podcasts

• How to Get Lead­er­ship Teams to Think Strategically
• “Think Time” is the Only Way to Become More Strategic