My colleague Jim McNaughton, ONE Community Member and the leader of the Consulting Tools Development Team sent a note to his fellow team members the other day. I was so inspired, I asked him if I could post it on our blog. He agreed. It speaks very clearly to the hopes we all share in the ONE Community – I hope it inspires you too.
What Success Looks Like To Me
I entered the building lobby looking for the bank of elevators that would take me to my destination. Suddenly I heard a hearty “Hello” and turned to meet my greeter. It was an old acquaintance I had once worked with, not someone I knew well but a person with whom I had shared the experience of delivering a successful project with all the highs and lows that implies. He asked me what I was up to but before I could answer the elevator doors opened and we stepped in. In the short time it took to take me to my destination floor I quickly told him of the work I was involved in with the ONE group and how it was impacting my life. Then the door opened and I left him to go on to his destination, not expecting to see him again for some time.
Surprisingly, a short time later he called me at my office and said he had mentioned what I was doing to his boss, a director within his firm, who in turn had expressed an interest and had asked him to follow up with me. They were going to have a management team meeting in about a week and they were wondering if I would be willing to give a twenty minute presentation about conscious leadership and how it could apply to their situation. I leapt at the opportunity and immediately started to prepare. The next week I walked into a small boardroom and faced a group of managers looking at me expectantly. Feeling extremely appreciative of the work done by the team of people who had created the presentation I was about to give, I dove in and, in the time allotted to me, covered a synopsis of the concepts and the principles of ONE and conscious leadership. At the conclusion, the Director expressed her thanks and asked if I would be willing to do an extended version of the presentation at an offsite meeting of her peers that she was to attend. She would have to clear it with her executive manager but felt that there was a close alignment between the message of ONE and the direction her company was taking in embracing a values-oriented management style.
So a short time later I found myself doing a one hour presentation that was used to kick off the Directors’ offsite for that division of the company. In the presentation I talked to how we could co-create a program to embed the concepts and principles of ONE into the culture and processes at their company. We discussed how this could be built around an initial two day workshop to the management team and, over time, it would lead to a teach-the-teacher situation where future workshops were lead by inspired individuals from within the organization. We addressed the need to follow up with key participants through follow-up one day workshops three to four months after the kickoff of the program. Finally we talked about implementing a revised balanced scorecard that measured results against the values and principled approaches that were being implemented throughout all levels of the division.
The ideas were enthusiastically accepted and work started almost immediately. And while the effect of the change was not immediately apparent, in time the executive and the directors started to see the benefits; in terms of reduced turnover, increased productivity, greater employee engagement, more creativity and a myriad other, less tangible, benefits. The executive manager started to discuss these results with his peers and interest was being expressed to move this out into other divisions within the company.
It was around this time that I arrived home one day to find my teen-aged son working at the kitchen table on an assignment. Even though he was now into his third year of Engineering at the local university, he still liked to do his homework in the kitchen. On this day, rather than complain to him about his messy room, his irregular hours, the latest color in his hair, or any of the myriad of other unimportant things that we tend to let get in the way of our relationships, I asked if I could help. “Sure, why not” was the response. So I sat down and immediately realized that I was not only over my head but I didn’t really have the foggiest notion of how to solve the problem he was working on. So we just started talking about it and I tried to visualize what a solution might look like. At some point in the conversation he suddenly said “Eureka!” or something like that and feverishly started writing out a complex solution. When he finished he thanked me for my help. Perplexed I had to admit that I didn’t have any idea what it was that I said that lead to his solving the problem. His response was that I hadn’t said anything that was directly useful but that I had caused him to alter his thinking from the path he was on onto a different line of thinking that lead ultimately to the solution. So, although what I had said was sadly quite useless, the act of saying it had led to a transformation in thinking that was, on the other hand, quite useful.
And that is what success means to me.
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Your story is so poignant and so inspiring Jim!! I think back to our time together as a group at last fall’s Higher Ground Leadership Experience and feel such pleasure and excitement about how you’re bringing your amazing gifts and this powerful work into the world. Thank you for writing down your story and sharing it. It’s a very timely spark of inspired fire for me.
Love and thanks to you,
Shonnie