Mark Fritz is a regular Vistage speaker who is on a mission to end micromanagement around the world. He is passionate about helping leaders create highly engaged organisations where every employee treats the business as if it were their own.
One of my favourite examples from Mark is his question: “why does nobody ever wash a rental car?”
Why Does Nobody Ever Wash a Rental Car?
Have you ever washed a rental car? No. It is not your car. You give it back covered in muck and full of litter. It’s not your problem. Its someone else’s car. It got you from A to B.
Many people treat their work like a rental car. Do your employees treat your business like it is their rental car, or do they take care of it as if it were their own vehicle?
Leaders must be great at 3 things to create Success…
The 3 Necessary Conditions for the Success of your Organisation
Clarity – when things are clear, you take more action. When things are clear, everybody takes more action.
People – it is not your people that are your most important asset, it is your people pipeline. How are you developing the next generation of people? If you are not developing people to replace your current leaders, your current leaders can’t grow into their next roles.
Influencing Skills – if your people can’t influence someone else on the team, where do they come to get help? to you. If your people can’t influence, they depend too much on you.
As a leader who really wants everyone to grow around you, you need to help people around you develop two abilities:
- Business Judgement
- Influencing Skills
Check out Mark’s short video from a recent Vistage open day in the UK:
Check out some of Mark’s recent blog posts:
Learning Business Judgement
I am biased. I believe business schools are excellent at developing business judgement. During the 19 months of my MBA program at IESE Business School, I worked through 650 cases. Each case is a business decision. Each case requires some individual work to practice your own ability to focus on what is important and develop a plan. Each case then requires that you work with a small team to influence them about your plan, and to allow your ideas to be tested and changed by their influence. Each case then requires that you enter a classroom with an excellent teacher who will take the discussion even deeper. There is no better way to develop general business judgement than in the business school environment.
Learning to Influence
I have a vested interest in this. I have taught over 44,000 business leaders, MBAs and political leaders to Speak more Powerfully – specifically to Move People to Action. I would suggest you begin by taking my Speaking as a Leader online course (currently free). You can also watch the playlist on my Youtube channel (over 70K subscribers) called Develop Your Speaking Skills.
Have a great summer.