Hop and change

Ah, Spring!

The sun has passed the equator, heading north, and the arrival of robins, crocus, matzoh and Cadbury eggs heralds the season of metaphoric and symbolic renewal.

More tangibly, one of the advantages of the return of light and warmth is getting outside to play.  The benefits of outdoor play are manifest.  It helps develop creativity, problem-solving ability and social skills that carry from childhood into adult work-life interactions in ways that indoor activities do not.

Take the game of hopscotch, for example.  It is an early childhood game of which I'm sure most of you are familiar.  According to research, there's a tremendous connection between this simple game and physical and cognitive development:

"...as your child refines her physical coordination, she is also building essential neural pathways in the brain. It's those exact same pathways which will one day become the conduits for left/right brain thinking tasks such as creativity, reasoning, and self-regulation."

In other words, it's not play, it's training.  And it carries on to the professional level.

And as Spring represents the return of growth cycle, hopefully your thoughts are turning to your employee playtime training.  Ongoing training is essential to growth, even for the smallest of businesses.  If your organization is going to grow, you have to grow everyone involved with it.  And that takes training.

An enemy of one?

About two thousand years ago, a Chinese general named Sun-Tzu wrote a 13-chapter tract about the martial arts and warfare, entitled "The Art of War."

While I am sure that he was, as many leaders tend to be, very self confident and at least a touch self-centered, I am equally sure he didn't envision his treatise becoming a best-seller for business leaders a couple of millennia hence.

The Art of War is widely quoted and cited on a range of business topics, from general management to sales to human resources, and has become synonymous with the melding of strategic and tactical thinking.  One of the most famous lines speaks directly to that: "Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat."

But Sun-Tzu also believed that engaging in war was a fool's choice, "Anyone who excels in defeating his enemies triumphs before his enemy's threat become real."   He also said: “If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but know not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat.  If you know not the enemy or yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”

In other words, get to know yourself and the battle is won.

Last week I listed five steps to achieve greater focus for yourself and your organization which I have learned from working with successful business owners and CEOs.   In more depth, they are:

Crossroads

In last week's post, I wrote:  "In the weeks ahead, I'll outline ...  an "Owner's Manual" for 21st century small business leaders."

That wasn't entirely accurate.  What's follows over the next few weeks is not a manual, in the truest sense of the word:

Manual [ˈmænjʊəl] adj 
[via Old French from Latin manuālis, from manus hand]

1. of or relating to a hand or hands

2. operated or done by hand manual controls

3. physical, as opposed to mental or mechanical manual labour

4. by human labor rather than automatic or computer-aided means

5. of, relating to, or resembling a manual

n

1. a book, esp of instructions or information a car manual

2. (Music, other) Music one of the keyboards played by hand on an organ

3. (Military) Military the prescribed drill with small arms

Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged © HarperCollins

The problem with manuals is that they are so, well, hands-on, in a more or less literal sense, AND they are very basic (find key, put it in ignition, turn on car...) Manuals tell, rather than teach.

What I have found from working with business owners, CEOs and organizational leaders for over 30 years is that the best seek not a how-to, but a map, a compass, a guide to help them navigate.  They are constantly trolling for new experience and expertise and they want guidance on better managing themselves and their businesses.

You say you want an evolution

Change:  there are few words in the human lexicon that evoke more angst than this, both good and bad.

Strange, that.

Change is a constant in our lives.  As constant as the dawn or the sunset.  Every day is different and change is an ever-present aspect of living.

Change is feared because often we are not in control of it, especially in business. Key employees leave, new competitors emerge, customers disappear.  (These changes are in your control, but that's the subject of another post.)

It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change. Charles Darwin

Change forces us out of our habits.  And habits are a basic human mechanism for dealing with the  complexities of everyday life.

In a recent book, The Power of Habit, NY Times business writer Charles Duhigg explores the science behind why we do what we do (and how.)