In leadership, there is a strong and understandable tendency to make decisions based on facts and figures. The more data we can get our hands on, the more we often resolve, the more validated the business story we’re building must be. Rarely do we notice when the stats, measures and plans subsume the story. Metrics matter, but so does our story. To be sure, it matters in that it allows us to look back and claim what we’ve already done. Yet, it also matters for clarifying where we are and where we want to go. A story I heard recently put a powerful visual on this leadership truth. Before I share it, consider the vital role of story in leadership for a moment.
When it came to leadership, Peter Drucker was considered something of a guru. He was often asked to predict which companies in the present were most likely to succeed in the future. In response, Drucker was fond of asking a single, seemingly simple question: What business are you in? It sounds innocuous. The initial response of many leaders was much the same, some version of: “We compete in industry X, with product or service Y, and” as if to validate their answer, “we have a current market share of Z, which we hope to grow to Q in the next 5 years.” While the answer isn’t unimportant, Drucker didn’t place much value on that first reply. What he sought was a deeper response.
That’s why he famously asked that same question five times over. He wanted to push leaders to return to the core of why they began the business in the first place, even why they sought to lead. He meant to move them to a view not bound by time, market conditions, the current business model or indeed the facts and figures, at least as leaders tended to see them before Drucker’s question. That unencumbered view, he understood, that greater story, was what empowered a leadership team to think and act agilely and effectively into the future – a future guaranteed to be unlike the past or even the present. As important as the facts and figures of the moment are as points of reference, he also knew that, unchecked, those measures become the story, the inadvertent line in the sand that leaders, their teams and their companies hesitate to question, even when the measures lose their relevance.
There are times when the most important leadership act is to enable the organization to step back and gain perspective. It isn’t about forgoing the data. It’s about allowing enough intellectual humility to consider the facts in new ways, to revisit or revise assumptions, even to change course. Doing so allows clarity in the present and also the renewed ability to see the possibilities ahead. Which brings us back to the image at the center of that story I recently heard, an image that should become a mantra for every leader leading in uncertain times.
Logitech CEO Bracken Darrell shared the story on The Storied Future Podcast. Host Chris Hare asked Darrell about his early life, wondering what, if anything, had made a difference in his later success as a leader. Darrell didn’t hesitate. Then he went deep. He began by sharing that his father had walked out on the family when Darrell and his siblings were still young. He confided that in those early years, his mother would often suggest that her past and present choices, both in her work and in her personal life, had limited her. Darrell said she spoke of them less as wonderings and more as facts. Those so-called facts became her data points. Soon, they also established her boundaries, not just present ones, but future ones as well. Even as young as he was, Darrell recognized the dynamic. One day, he called it out and suggested another path.
“Imagine you’re standing on a beach, and you draw a line in the sand with a stick,” Darrell said he said to her, then added unexpectedly, “but you draw the line behind your heels.” He went on to suggest to his mother that the image should remind her that everything up to that point was behind her. The living part was still in front of her, ahead where no line was drawn. The visual became his own, the seasoned and successful CEO shared. “It’s deeply inside me, and it colors the way I think about everything.”
Visualize allowing that image to color your own thinking and leadership. “It’s the idea,” Darrell expanded, “that you’re actually starting over – not every five years, but every day. You wake up in the morning, and nothing is forcing you to stay where you are … to not change the things that you should be changing. That line, the one behind you, it only looks like everything up to it is real, but really, it’s already gone. It’s over. It’s past. You can only own what’s now, into the future.”
Leading implies heading somewhere, guiding others as you do. Isn’t the future you’re aiming for? If so, all the rest needs to be seen in that context, not to mention, behind you.
Opinions expressed by SmartBrief contributors are their own.
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