Your accomplishments, including what you’ve learned and how you grew as a result.LESSON: There is always an opportunity cost to creating the space to grow. You need to recognise this and be willing to pay the price.
I WAS WORKING WITH TESSA, the MD of the EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) division of a FTSE 50 FMCG company. The region contributed more than a third of the business’s global profits. Tessa had a complicated structure beneath her: thirty countries all at different stages of development, and each with its own particular challenges. Some smaller countries were clustered together, meaning that there was a total of twelve managers under Tessa, either running big countries or a group of small ones. I was working with Tessa herself, the team as a whole, joining their quarterly meetings, but also with each of the twelve ‘market’ MDs. It was a big, engrossing project, but one in which I felt I could make a real contribution.
Almantas ran the Baltics area – Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. As we worked together, he began to open up and share some of his frustrations. In particular, he thought he was being overlooked for promotion to one of the company’s bigger markets in Western Europe. Deep down he felt there was something prejudicial going on, that people regarded him as different and thought he wouldn’t fit in culturally elsewhere.
For the last three years he’d tried to offset this by working harder and harder, driving his team remorselessly and exceeding his targets. The more we talked, the more it became clear that whatever the truth of his suspicions, he himself had a real concern about whether his approach and style would be successful outside of his home market.
After some discussion, we agreed that he would do three things over the next twelve months. First, he would take an advanced business English course, to improve his confidence in communicating. He found an intensive three-month course that took place on three evenings a week. He also found a mentor in the country he most wanted to work in who generously agreed to meet him socially and help build his cultural awareness. They got on so well that Almantas, his wife and young sons were invited to stay with his mentor, and so got the chance to see what living – not just working – in this new place would be like. Finally, his manager, impressed by the commitment he was showing, agreed that he could undertake a three-month secondment in the country. This was a serious sacrifice family-wise, but Almantas took the plunge.
The secondment was a great success and resulted in the permanent posting that Almantas had desired for so long. He and his family uprooted themselves, moving across Europe for a bold new chapter of their lives. It was a huge upheaval, as they had to pretty much start all over again. His sons spoke the language of their new country (but not fluently), and had to settle into a new school and make new friends. Almantas’s wife probably struggled most, having to navigate a new language, culture and country.
There was a cost for Almantas in achieving his goal of promotion: he only just made his target that year, in stark contrast to his team’s exceptional performance of the previous three years. There had always been an awareness that this might happen, but all that really mattered was that Almantas hit his targets – he wasn’t duty bound to exceed them as he usually did. Nonetheless this still carried a risk: there might be comments from the Board about why his numbers had dropped so significantly, his reputation for smashing his targets would be injured, and he would no longer receive the accolades for having the largest year-on-year growth.
This ‘opportunity cost’ was, though, a price Almantas was willing to pay, because although it might invite raised eyebrows from elsewhere in the company, he and Tessa had discussed his plan in detail and had both agreed that if the secondment went well, it would be worth it. At the meeting where he was offered the transfer, Tessa made it clear that she hoped he would soon go back to exceeding his targets in his new environment, but that this year’s ‘blip’ was something she was willing to live with. Almantas had chosen a powerful ‘big goal’ and had executed it in a ruthless and determined way. He reaped the reward. As, eventually, did the company, because the following year – you guessed it – he was back smashing his KPIs.
‘And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.’
attributed to Anais Nin
Almantas’s story is less dramatic than the life or death situation that faced Trevone or the existential angst felt by Oscar. On the surface it is just about a manager getting a promotion involving a relocation. This is intentional. While the drama of the preceding stories, with their major upheavals and core pathogenic beliefs are truly representative of the work I do with senior leaders, the work is also, sometimes, more prosaic. It is no less life-changing for that. For Almantas and his family what happened that year was a big change.
When we grow we may have to give up a part of our identity to which we’ve become very attached, as Almantas did when he sacrificed his reputation for ‘smashing’ targets. This kind of exchange, of one benefit for another, is known as an ‘opportunity cost’ – the giving up of something beneficial or positive that you could have received by choosing an alternative course of action. One way of thinking of it is as a trade-off. In Chapter 9 we discussed the trade-off that takes place during delegation: the certainty of knowing exactly how a task or project would be executed if you did it yourself is exchanged for the benefit of not having to do it, and the freed-up time and energy that that creates. In a sense, everything in life requires us to trade one thing against something else; if, for example, you decide to eat out less, you get the benefit of saving the money and calories, but in return you have to buy, prepare and cook your food (oh, and wash up). Go to the gym and you have that less time to do those things that are arguably more fun than going to the gym, but you gain good health and in all likelihood, increased longevity. Opportunity cost is everywhere, and as the CEO of your own life, you have to weigh these kind of decisions up against each other on a daily basis. There’s an opportunity cost of pursuing a new career versus staying in our familiar one, an opportunity cost of a sabbatical, an opportunity cost of really focusing on one area of growth rather than another. Everything we say yes to requires that we say no to something else.
Sometimes, growing requires that we all but relinquish one identity for another. Huge changes like these can swiftly strip away layer upon layer of self that we’ve acquired over the years, compelling us to let go and to experience ourselves and life anew. This is rarely comfortable, but once again, we have a choice about how we ride the rollercoaster. We can cling on for dear life, becoming rigid and brittle, or we can do our best to breathe and surrender to the ups and downs.
In effect, this entire book has been about creating the space to grow. Doing this means facing the parts of us that don’t want to grow, but that prefer coasting through life and taking the easy path. Growing doesn’t mean that we have to get rid of this part of ourselves; ease is a beautiful energy, and I actually think it’s a vital energy to touch base with on a regular basis. In business most of us often force things too much, pushing for results without allowing ourselves and our teams time and space to recharge and take stock.
We might live in human-built metropolises, disconnected from much of the natural world, yet even the most cursory of glances at nature will remind us that growth is cyclical rather than constant, and that winter is an essential and unavoidable part of the cycle. In the commercial world, it’s easy to ignore this and buy into the story that growth is linear and constant. The corporations we work within may set year-on-year targets in a consistent, predictable way, always aiming, say, for a 10 per cent increase in profits. Our countries do the same, seeking consistent growth in GDP year on year. However, as Anais Nin states (in Volume 4 of her diaries), ‘We do not grow absolutely, chronologically. We grow sometimes in one dimension, and not in another, unevenly. We grow partially. We are relative. We are mature in one realm, childish in another. The past, present, and future mingle and pull us backward, forward, or fix us in the present.’
The poet David Whyte has observed that human beings are the only life force on the planet with the capacity to stop themselves from flowering. In your own unique way, and via your own meandering path, make sure you always create the space to let whatever is within you bloom.
There is one idea that I use religiously to ensure that I am keeping my plans for growth at the very forefront of my mind, and as a clear priority for action.
We rarely stop to question the usefulness of quarterly and annual business reviews, but when was the last time you created space to systematically review your personal development? Pressing pause to reflect on where you have grown, plus looking at any major struggles, challenges or areas for development that have arisen, can give you a lot of perspective. It can also remind you that whatever you’re facing right now, you’ve already achieved a lot. So how do you make sure that your strategy for growth, your development plan – for want of a better phrase – is on track?
You have to create space to review and refresh what you are doing. I suggest doing so in what I call your ‘No.1 Meeting’. For me, this is a meeting that rarely gets cancelled. Sometimes it has to be done on the hoof, in the back of a taxi or in an airport lounge, but in some way I almost always honour the commitment. Ideally, this No.1 meeting should be scheduled for half an hour. Who are the attendees for this meeting? Just the three of us, as the De La Soul song goes – ‘Me, Myself and I’. Yes, a half hour a week of reflection time is one of the most crucial building blocks of creating and sustaining the space to keep your plan on track. How you do it is a matter of personal style. I need a notepad and pen in my hand, even if I don’t write anything down. A friend I know has his while swimming. Another friend every Friday evening on her long commute, with headphones on and eyes closed against the distractions of the packed train. The agenda? Draw up one that works for you, but something like:
1. How am I feeling this week? Has it been a good week or a bad week? Why?
2. How are my weekly objectives going? Do I need to review them?
3. How do I see this next week shaping up?
4. How am I doing on my big goal?
Now, this sustained level of setting aside proper time for reflection should be replicated throughout the year. I recommend to clients that they undertake a personal monthly, quarterly and annual review too. Some suggested areas to review, which I encourage you to tailor to your own needs, are:
Your accomplishments, including what you’ve learned and how you grew as a result.
Your failures, including what you’ve learned and how you grew as a result (like many entrepreneurs, you may find that you learn and grow far more from your failures than your successes). Where did you fall short?
Any opportunities you missed or turned down, and why.
Any learning curves you’ve been on. Have you started to develop a completely new skill? What are the top three challenges and lessons you’ve gained from this?
Key lessons learned by ‘category’ and overall (categories could be specific and project- or accountability-oriented, or you could use the four sections from this book: Think, Connect, Do and Be).
What feedback have you had? Feedback is a powerful tool for discovering where we have (or haven’t) grown, and where our key areas of development may be.
To summarise, this is how your No.1 meetings schedule might look:
| Weekly | Focused on this week and next | ½ hour |
| Monthly | Reviewing the month and looking forward | 90 mins |
| Quarterly results | Checking progress against the plan for the year | ½ day |
| Annual retreat | Reviewing and setting next year’s goal | 1 day |
On the date of each long meeting, you miss out the shorter meeting; for example, you don’t have your monthly meeting when that month is a quarterly review.
The quarterly half day may seem like a lot, but if it involves a thorough review of where you are and what might need to change going forward it isn’t, especially if some of that time is spent having a heart-to-heart with your ‘goal mentor’ (see p. 168). I tend to spend an hour preparing this meeting, then treat my mentor to a nice lunch, before spending an hour capturing thoughts and planning. Boom! Half a day gone, but spent so productively, centring me back on what I want to be achieving, not what the world has been demanding.
When it comes to my ‘annual retreat’ I take it quite literally. I go off on a ‘business trip’ where I am the client I’m visiting – somewhere that’s a short train ride away, where I won’t be disturbed by work, family or friends. Last year I went to stay in a B’n’B at Dungeness, a bleak but beautiful stretch of the English south coast where, if you try hard enough, you can hear the constant low-level hum of the neighbouring nuclear reactor. I arrived in time for an enjoyable dinner, then had an early night. The next day, I woke up refreshed and took a long walk followed by a few hours pondering and scribbling things down. Then a light lunch, another stroll along the endless shale beach before some more focused thinking and planning. I then had dinner and another early night, getting up the next morning to catch an early(ish) train back to ‘civilisation’. In my backpack there was a notebook full of if not the right answers then certainly the right questions, ready to guide me through the next twelve months.
Now, as you may have already noticed I am a particularly structured person. I completely accept that others may want to do all this in a less routine way. However, while you are welcome to jettison the more finicky parts of what I’m proposing, differences in style or personality don’t preclude the need for discipline of some sort. It can be less process driven, not as systematic and more laid back, but it must be done.
When clients complain that they can’t afford to spend time in this way, I not only make the obvious (if slightly facetious) point that they can’t afford not to, I also ask them what percentage of their time they could see themselves re-allocating without it materially affecting their performance? If I say 10 per cent, they usually say that’s too much. If I say 5 per cent, most say it might be possible. In fact, the time I am suggesting setting aside for these No.1 meetings is actually about 2.5 per cent of your working time per year (this assumes a total of 50 hours out of 2000 worked).
ASK YOURSELF: What’s my way of reviewing how my plan is coming along? Do I do this in a disciplined, open, honest way? Am I growing in the way I want to?
In Part 4 we have looked at three parts of being: dreaming, being in balance, and growing. These all raise big questions that transcend the day-to-day demands of work and ask us to think about things from first principles. Why am I doing this? Who for? Who do I want to be? And ultimately, how do I want to live – even, how do I want to die?
The idea of being brave seems to stand out as the key lesson. Have the courage to ask the hard questions, make the change, take the risk. As Renton says in the film Trainspotting, ‘Choose life.’