Wisdom Literature – 10 “To Do’s” To Expand Your Horizons and Accelerate Your Growth

Wisdom Literature – 10 “To Do’s” To Expand Your Horizons and Accelerate Your Growth

As promised, here is some more wisdom gleaned from the Willow Creek Global Leadership Summit…

The work of Jim Collins is the subject for today. He is a creator of wisdom literature at its best! If you have not yet encountered Jim Collins, he is a nationally acclaimed “business thinker” and best selling author. His wisdom literature contributions include “Good to Great”, “Built to Last”, and “How the Mighty Fall”. He is a researcher and student of companies, examining how they grow, the leadership styles they incorporate, how they achieve superior performance, and how organizations can learn from them and become great within their own circle of influence.

Jim spoke to us about team dynamics and leadership, with great emphasis on the traits of teams on the way up, and teams on the way down. Keep in mind this was not a list of his opinions, but the result of dedicated and methodical research on some of the most successful companies and organizations of all time. He has identified very human traits like denial, passion, arrogance, and humility, and identified how they affect the organization through its growth and decline.

The core values of an organization, and the dedication of the leadership to those values is one of the keys to long term success. The most successful organizations have at their core an ideal that is bigger than they are… a reason to endure the struggle. They do not measure their success in financial terms, but rather are driven by a purpose beyond money and success. They have identified what would be missed if they were to disappear. Has anyone ever asked you “What’s your why?” Do not under estimate the power of being totally clear about why you get up each morning and do what you do. That clarity is what will carry you through tough times.

Jim wrapped up his discussion with a list of “to do’s” that I feel bears repeating (somewhat modified for a broader audience).

1. Do your diagnostics. Inventory your physical and mental resources and honestly assess what is the truth about where you are, what you have, and what you need to get where you want to go.

2. Count your blessings. Put them on a spreadsheet and account for every good thing you have that you did not cause or create on your own.

3. Examine your question to statement ratio, and increase it by 50%.

4. Determine the key roles needed to be filled on your team (the roles you cannot, or do not do well), and fill them with fantastic people of like mind.

5. Keep a notebook of continued diagnostics of you and your team’s performance (see #1).

6. Inventory the brutal facts. Find ways to measure and evaluate what you are doing and how it is working. You can not manage what you do not measure. Part of this process is continuing to learn and grow. Wisdom literature is one of the best tools at your disposal to expand on the ways you evaluate your efforts and results.

7. Make a stop doing list.

8. Define your results, and recognize your milestones. In my article “How Wise Leaders Inspire” I discussed the importance of celebrating those milestones. You are, in essence, taking your team “from here to there”.

9. Double your reach to young people.

10. Set a Big Hairy Audacious Goal (BHAG)

In “How the Mighty Fall, Jim states, “The signature of the truly great versus the merely successful is not the absence of difficulty, but the ability to come back from setbacks, even cataclysmic catastrophes, stronger than before. Great nations can decline and recover. Great companies can fall and recover. Great social institutions can decline and recover. And great individuals can fall and recover. As long as you never get entirely knocked out of the game, there always remains hope.”

Jim left us with two final thoughts. Never give up on your core values, and never give up on disciplining yourself to create your own future.

Blessings & Adventure,

Lynn “lynnibug” Rios