Conor writes about Intentional Leadership and Building Self Belief in those around you
This video is for Vistage Speakers, and is a briefing video about what to expect as a Vistage speaker.
“Professionally, I love working with committed people and making a difference. When I get to see the before-and-after it’s tremendously rewarding.”
Michael Canic
Michael Canic is a business strategy consultant and regular Vistage speaker on the subject of Relentless Consistency.
This is a 30 minute interview I conducted with Waldemar Schmidt, past-CEO of a 250,000 employee global company. He shared insights about the role of the CEO:
View on YouTube: The Job of the CEO
Waldemar Schmidt, past-CEO of ISS, a 250,000 employee global facilities services business.
Currently on the Boards of 28 companies, London Business School Advisory Board, Professor at Copenhagen Business School, Executive in Residence at IMD.
Author of 4 books including “The Job of the CEO“. Note: all book Royalties are donated to the Waldemar Schmidt Scholarship for (Brazilian) students at the international MBA Programme at Copenhagen Business School.
Note: all book Royalties are donated to the Waldemar Schmidt Scholarship for (Brazilian) students at the international MBA Programme at Copenhagen Business School.
A leader should be interested in developing 2 competencies in the people within their organisation:
If your team doesn’t have #1 they are taking poor decisions. If your team doesn’t have #2 they cannot execute without your support (you will be sucked in to every initiative).
Most people ask few questions and rapidly jump to a solution. Great decision makers ask many questions and get many perspectives before they commit to a decision. Here’s a set of great questions…
This set of questions was inspired by the Global Digital Citizen Foundation and by Vistage Issue Processing where we help leaders develop the ability to ask great questions to help leaders think more deeply and see new perspectives, clarify objectives and take disciplined effective action.
Divided into who, what, where, when, why, how…
I Keep Six Honest Serving Men
Rudyard Kipling
I KEEP six honest serving-men
(They taught me all I knew);
Their names are What and Why and When
And How and Where and Who.
I send them over land and sea,
I send them east and west;
But after they have worked for me,
I give them all a rest.
I let them rest from nine till five,
For I am busy then,
As well as breakfast, lunch, and tea,
For they are hungry men.
But different folk have different views;
I know a person small—
She keeps ten million serving-men,
Who get no rest at all!
She sends’em abroad on her own affairs,
From the second she opens her eyes—
One million Hows, two million Wheres,
And seven million Whys!
The Elephant’s Child
You’re doing everything right at work, taking all the right advice, but you’re just not moving up. Why?
Susan Colantuono shares a simple, surprising piece of advice you might not have heard before quite so plainly. This talk, while aimed at an audience of women, has universal takeaways — for men and women, new graduates and mid-career workers.
Susan’s argument is that mentorship and organisation-wide leadership development have a tendency to focus on the personal effectiveness and organisation leadership aspects, but do not work with women to take full charge of their Business, Strategic and Financial acumen.
Jim Collins delivered the Keynote at this year’s Vistage ChairWorld meeting to over 800 participants.
Jim Collins is a student and teacher of what makes great companies tick, and a Socratic advisor to leaders in the business and social sectors. He has authored 6 books that have sold more than 10 million copies worldwide. His books include:
Jim Collins shared 12 questions that come out of his work over the last 25 years.
These are my notes and reflections from his Keynote address.
The 4 part video series below gives a short overview of each of the 12 questions.
The first step is a conscious decision on the part of leadership to decide for excellence, to decide to build an enduring great company. Often leaders are enduring great individuals, but that doesn’t make for an enduring great company. Leaders must put excellence in the company over “success” in their own individual life. (This doesn’t mean that they give up a good life, but that they are willing to pay the price of leading an Enduring Great Company.)
The author of this blog with Jim Collins, best selling author of Good to Great and Built to Last, at Vistage ChairWorld, January 2019
Right people, then trust them to figure out where the bus is going. Great vision without great people is irrelevant. Single most important talent: select great people for the key seats. Nothing is more important that key seats filled with great people.
What brutal facts must we confront? No opinions.
Fox knows many things, hedgehog knows 1 Fox loves complexity, hedgehog loves simple Intersection of Passion, best in world, drives economic engine Big is not equal to great (think restaurants- if it were to disappear it would leave an unfillable hole)
Driving the flywheel “Which push made the difference?” None… Cumulative effort consistently over long time Flywheel- causal links between, inevitability “I admire Nike” “what do Nike do? Products so great that pros wear them” great products + social proof Execution 1-10… flywheel accelerator at quality of execution of lowest quality of execution Best investment strategy “a highly undiversified investment where you are right” “We can make it up on a good day” fallacy. Be super careful of overextension leading to missing your March Cycle across USA… booked the hotels ahead of time: have to make it, and prepare for tomorrow and the next day
“Part of the task of helping others is to be really hard on them… with love”
Innovation small, then massive support of small wins. Scale the right innovation. Scaling innovation is more important than innovation. Fail: Not enough bullets Bullets but no guts to fire cannonball Untargeted cannonballs
The first step of moving from good to great to built to last is “don’t die” I am terrified by good times. Complacency! Be properly terrified all the time. Fortune 500 85% carnage rate.
Productive paranoia:Prepare for the storms (cash to assets ratio 3-10 times greater)
The only mistakes you can learn from are the ones you survive
Idea-> biz-> great company = enduring success
“The genius with a thousand helpers model is not building a great company”
Jim Collins
Shift from time telling (individual level) to clock building (at a company level). Every leader can grow to be the leader of a bigger, greater company. Don’t answer questions with answers… help people find their own answers, their own resourcefulness.
Steve Jobs 2.0 – had a yoda who helped him create a culture of geniuses. What’s your leadership 2.0?
Yin & yang Core set of unchanging values and purpose, constant progress towards your north star
Time frame 10-25 years… anything less is just base camp
“The best people want to do the hard things”
Jim Collins
A Good BHAG frightens mediocrity away. Test of BHAG – does it repel some people?
Luck event:
Get good at making the most of when luck happens. How do you handle the unexpected? Use both good luck & bad luck (crisis allows change) to improve.
Only doing is not discipline. True discipline is about what not to do first. What should you not be doing?
Peter Drucker – age 65 had written only 1/3 of his books. Age 86 wrote 10 more books.
“You will survive, you will probably succeed… The question Mr Collins is how to be useful”
Peter Drucker (to young Jim Collins)
Are you a Level 5 leader? How do you address these 12 questions? Where do you struggle? I’d love to hear from you in the comments below.
Here’s a growing list of some of the best specific podcast episodes (I will keep updating this blog post). Some are my favourites and some have been recommended by readers and friends.
What are some of the best podcast episodes that you have heard? (looking for specific episodes rather than the whole podcast…) . Thanks!
I’d love your recommendations of channels or specific podcasts in the comments below.
(link to his podcast https://tim.blog/podcast/) (itunes)
(itunes)
Dan has several podcasts and often appears on others’ podcasts…
(itunes)
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Are you currently a member of a board of directors, or do you hope one day to take the role as a board member?
I came across this short video from the Irish Institute of Directors sharing 10 common mistakes made by company directors. George Bartlett shares from his 25 years of experience as a board member.
Are you currently a board member? What lessons have you learnt? What tips and guidance would you share with someone who has interest in becoming an effective board member?
George Bartlett shares some corporate governance tips.
Gary Burnison, the CEO of leading global headhunters Korn Ferry recently shared a tool for understanding the current health of your career, the Career Momentum Index (CMI).
Gary says that, in our careers, we also need to honestly know “Where am I right now?”. For a healthy body, we can check out our heart rate, our body mass index (BMI), cholesterol, blood pressure, etc. For careers, Korn Ferry have the Career Momentum Index (CMI).
If you are interested in learning more about Career Momentum, Gary continues his series on Career Momentum with The 90 Day Career Diet, Step 2.
I recently heard Doctor Marian Rojas, psychiatrist and author of “how to have good things happen to you” (in spanish) share the 3 questions you need to answer to build a fulfilling life for yourself:
If you are IESE alumni the IESE Careers Service department are a great source of objective career coaching. There are some changes that we can manage by ourselves, there are many changes that we can really only achieve with the support of others – mentors, coaches and supporters. Here’s a list of the major changes that people turn to coaching to help navigate.
Last night I hit a goal that has taken 3 years. Back in 2016 in Washington on the EO Global Leadership Academy, together with Rich Mulholland and Christophe Magnussen, we each committed to get serious about video creation.
Last night, I hit 100K subscribers on YouTube.
Thanks to all of you for subscribing, sharing, commenting, sending questions and ideas.
Starting is easy. There are no prizes for starting the marathon. You get the medal for finishing.
Most people I know are good at starting. Few people I know are good at finishing.
Who do you know who is good at finishing?
What do they do differently?
The closer you get to the end, the stronger the emotional resistance grows.
“An artist never finishes a work, he abandons it.”
Pablo Picasso
I thrive on interaction. This blog gives me a short term feedback as I write. I can hit publish after 15 to 20 minutes and immediately get responses.
I’ve consistently failed to write a book because I am addicted to the short term feedback of blog comments, of emails, of youtube videos… I’ve never been able to commit to the 3 year process of writing without “likes” and comments.
The question for me: is it still important to me to write a book?
