Posts

Intentional Leadership — D1, W4, M8 — Change

How strong is your self-confidence when it comes to changing the future?

The Steve Jobs movie has just been released. Have you seen it? I have not, yet. However, I think it’s safe to say Steve Jobs is well known as a game-changer in the computing industry to be sure. In fact, he has had tremendous influence over how we work and play…personal computing, iPod, iPad, iPhone, computer animation. Regardless of what some might say about his leadership style, the man had a vision and the drive to move it to reality. And, as a result, the way we live, connect, and interact with a variety of media has been forever changed.

When he was younger, he dreamed of a creating a home computer, but didn’t know how. He persuaded a friend to help him. Together, they created the first compact personal computer. Unfortunately, no one knew about it! They were unknowns, with almost no money and not reputation or credibility in their industry. Jobs sold his Volkswagen to finance Apple Computers. It wasn’t an overnight transformation, but it was a success, and I think most of us know  a lot of the rest of the story.

Are you aware that Jobs was inspired by a calligraphy course he took, and this is why, today, we have so many fonts to choose from with our Apple computers? He didn’t want people’s creativity to be limited to the old, boring, sans-serif fonts…and we benefited from that vision, as well.

Jobs and Wozniak were pioneers in their field. They envisioned change and made it happen. As they began to have some early successes, their confidence grew and they (eventually just Jobs) moved on to bigger challenges, enacting more and more change in how we compute, connect, listen to music, view other kinds of media, and create.

It’s my opinion that Steve Jobs will forever be remembered as a world-renowned leader.

Today, spend some time in reflection — think back to a time when you successfully brought about change. What gave you the courage to move forward?

What did you need to do to stay on track?

How did it give you confidence for other changes in your future?

What can you learn from the experience that will propel you even further in the days, months, and years ahead?

/by

Intentional Leadership — D5, W3, M8 — Change

Happy Friday! Wow! What a week, I just had. Spending time with the John Maxwell Team is all at once energizing, soul-filling, enlightening, thought-provoking, and the impetus to stretch myself, yet again, into changing the way I think and act and respond. It’s one of the few times I can say I am fully-engaged, totally “on” for 12-15 hours at a stretch, for several days in a row. When our time together comes to an end, I equate the disconnect as being similar to pulling the plug on a power cord…exhausted — but in a really satisfied way.

With that in mind, my plans for the weekend involve unpacking and lots of laundry! Reconnecting with my family, reconnecting with my normal daily schedule, prep for the next week. I will be beginning the Empowerment Mentoring series of lessons, again, (it’s a revolving series of lessons, so one does not need to start and stop on any particular lesson) on Tuesday with the Purpose, Vision, Goals lesson; will spend some time reviewing the material in preparation. Need to go through a week’s worth of mail; do some banking; and plan for next week.

Monday will be busy with a series of meetings, preparation for a full-day off-site team-building and vision workshop on Friday. Continuing some team-building and vision work with the maintenance team I’ve been working with. Have several coaching sessions scheduled, a couple of mentoring sessions, as well.

Plenty of reflection and writing to do to download everything I learned over the past week. And, of course, looking ahead to plan for September activities.

What’s on your agenda for the weekend?

What relationships need nurturing?

What time do you need to devote to yourself?

What activities would you like to fit in and how much rest do you need?

What do you need to do to prepare yourself for a great start to your week on Monday?

What do you need to be thinking about, and doing, to set yourself up for success in the coming weeks?

We will finish our month of focus on Change next week…can’t believe it’s going so quickly. So, I’ll “see” you on Monday.

In the meantime, make your time intentional!

/by

Intentional Leadership — D1, W2, M8 — Change

Approximately a year and a half ago, I attended the Chick-fil-A Leadercast, and Andy Stanley was one of the speakers. I don’t remember the entire content of his talk, but one part of it really stuck out for me and I remember it frequently.

He was telling to story of two executives, a few years ago, I believe at Dell. They were struggling with an issue that they had to resolve, and weren’t coming up with new ideas. You see, they were so firmly entrenched in their paradigms, that they couldn’t see their situation in a different light. They knew their way of thinking at that time wasn’t going to allow them to come up with the solutions they needed to change the direction of their business.

Finally, one of them had a stroke of genius and asked this question: “What would our successors (replacements) do?” You see, he recognized the dire situation they were in and was confident that if they weren’t able to change their way of thinking, and change their corporate strategy, they would soon be replaced with someone who could!

Pretty sobering thought, don’t you think?

This simple question allowed them to think as if they were someone else, with different beliefs, constraints, perceived barriers, etc…and they were able to come up with some ideas that were a bit out of the ordinary for them, but weren’t out of the realm of possibility. Having given themselves permission to consider ideas they wouldn’t normally entertain, they were able to come up with some better responses to their situation.

And that, as they say, made all the difference!

Take some time today to think back on a time when you had to change your way of thinking in order to succeed. What was the situation?

What “barriers” (either real or perceived) held you back?

What pushed you into a new way of thinking?

What were the results?

How have you used that experience with different situations?

Having had this experience, how quickly do you now move into a new way of thinking when faced with a challenge?

/by