Your success today may actually be giving your future a strangling choke-hold. In fact, I would argue that your past success may be your biggest threat for a bright future. Sounds counterintuitive, I know. The problem is that success breeds contentment and satisfaction. It causes us to feel like we “made it.” And that is a very dangerous place to be for both individuals and organizations. That’s because our success often leads us to stop taking risks, stop innovating and stop growing. If it’s not broke, don’t fix it. Right?
Last week, I spent a couple days with a group of senior leaders from a large financial institution. The average tenure of the participants with the organization was over 25 years. While the room was full of wisdom and experience, it was clear that their biggest challenge was embracing change and getting out of a “that’s the way we’ve always done it” mindset.
To their credit, they hired me because they know that change is needed, even though they have been very successful to-date. My first question for the CEO before I met with the team was, “How excited are your people to come to this training?” Then, I quickly dug down to discover whether I would have a room full of prisoners, vacationers or learners.
My job, as I see it, is to convert the prisoners and vacationers into learners and create an environment where I can open up the participants’ minds to the possibilities of growth and new opportunities. At the same time, I want to give them tangible strategies that they can use to make progress toward their most pressing work objectives – whether that be mentoring their teams, building an effective sales culture, managing their time, etc.
At one point in the training session, I gave each of the participants a rubber band. I then got them to share all the ways they could use the rubber band. Then I asked them what all their ideas had in common? The answer was that the rubber band becomes most useful when it is “stretched.”
Isn’t that true with us and our organizations? We are most useful when we stretch… and grow. So the obvious question is, “Do you have a Growth Plan?” Do you have one for yourself? Does your company have one?
Do you have a plan or process to continually expand beyond your current level of competence or expertise? Does it incorporate and leverage your strengths? How is it developed? Reviewed? Updated?
Do you have a way to push new limits in a way that will excite, motivate and inspire you? Do you have a way to leverage your past successes without resting on your laurels? Are you being held back by your existing success? Are your beliefs and habits helping or hurting you?
So what’s your Growth Plan? What will you do today to stretch and grow? How about this week? Or this month? Perhaps a more telling question is, “What have you done in the last six months that really stretched you?”
Want to know some of the biggest pitfalls you or your company will face when it comes to growing yourself or your team? I’ll share those in next week’s newsletter article.
