One of the things that happened during this chance crossing was the discusssion about how we took time to catch up on our professional lives. It was an interesting set of historical sharing. I was surprised at all of the chapters she has lived in her life during these past forty years. It was a very large 'wow' process. She is a legal consultant for lawyer firms. Her personal life was littered with a long list of challenges and tragedies. We had a lot to talk about.
She asked me what I had been doing in my work for the past forty years. I shared how nearly half of those years were spent repairing 'near-failing' business models as a retail consultant. She was very interested in that work. She described how the both of us walked our careers down similar paths. She advised lawyers on how to improve their law practices. I advised business owners on how to improve their retail practices. We discovered how the two careers were doing the same thing, just in different industries. We got involved in the discussion about our similarities.
Once we connected with these similarities we began to compare notes of discovery. It was of no surprise how each of our career practices actually parallel the other with the same kind of consulting approaches and working patterns. We essentially performed the same kind of tasks in our careers. We faced the same amazing challenges.
Guess what? The challenges I was faced to over come in my work with business leaders was strikingly similar to the same kind of challenges she had faced in her career with practicing lawyers. Our work was met with the same obstacles. We had fun discovering those similarities. Each discovery of similar patterns became our opening for some healthy laughs. We both poked fun at the kinds of tandem things we discovered that were part of our career challenges. We had fun reveiwing the fun in them.
As we parted from each other and returned to our original paths I began to think about how much value this chance meeting could offer to my next blog post. The common things I face that hinder my work were the very same things she ran into that always hindered her work. I found those similarities quit interesting. They were worth sharing.
What hurdles have I faced in my business repair business that are strikingly similar to the same ones she faced in her lawyer repair business? Let's discover those similar attributes on page two.
Page two.
Number one, denial. We both came to the joint conclusion that "denial" was easily the largest challenge both of us faced in our repair work careers. Neither one of us could remember a leader we worked with who did not have this nasty attribute running in front of the work we were trying to do. We voted this single challenge as the number one fault we were faced with overcoming. It was our toughest and most frequent challenge.
Number two, the ego. We rated this challenge as the second most difficult obstacle to overcome. The large ego of the people we worked with became the second most challenging thing we had to overcome in our repair work. Even though we both admitted that a large ego was very necessary for a leader to possess in order to perform their leadership roles well, we also recognized how damaging this process can grow to become. We discovered how much care for those huge ego's we had to employ in order to proceed well in the change work we needed to perform. Our approaches to success on this subject were very similar. It was comical. We needed to pair down the unchecked ego's in order to succeed.
Number three, control issues. Nearly ever personality we worked to improve was carefully surrounded by the need to control everything their world touched. They micromanaged everything. They could not take their hands off the wheel of any portion of their business design. They even controlled how the toilet paper was purchased, stored and arranged on the roll. Too many leaders tried to control too many things that had nothing to do with success and production. They wasted much of their most valuable time paying attention to trivial stuff. They majored in the minors and minored in the majors. We laughed at how often we faced this challenge. It become more funny to discover how many sharp leaders could not get this discovery understood.
Number four, nearly every office leader had a serious lacking in at least one area of business control. We both agreed on which three legs of the business stool were the most important ones to manage. The first leg was the product or services the owners provided. Every model needed to be very good at producing what they do. That was the first leg of the business success stool. The second leg was to market those products and services well. The marketing was the second leg of importance. The third leg was the bookkeeping portion of the business. Knowing the numbers, recording them properly and reading how they mean what they mean was the final and third leg of the business success stool. It was amazing how the two of us recognized these three legs as being the center of all business success. We strongly agreed on these three legs. We also found out in our career paths that every leader had a shortcoming with at least one of these three legs of the success stool. As we discussed what the most common weakness was we discovered how the accounting part was usually the weakest leg. Each owner had a tendency to steal from their own business models. It was common place stuff. The uniformity of this discovery was very funny stuff. Most owners steal from their capital funds. They steal success from the halls of their efforts...and strongly deny it. This was a big "WOW" for our discussion.
And finally, number five. We stopped at five. We wanted to continue on but we had appointments to keep. So we ended our comparisons at five. We laughed with our final discussion of similar traits. We shared how each leader wrestled with the ghosts of fear. We shared how many times each of us had to learn how to deal with hidden and protected levels of dominating fears. We talked about how our work was centered around the idea of overcoming the discovery of the fears our leaders kept wrapped tightly inside. We parted with the idea that maybe we were both mental doctors that advised leaders on how to overcome their most debilitating fears. We found that work to be some of the most challenging stuff we had ever faced.
As we parted, we wished each other well and offered advice to each other to keep up the good work and continue on to help others find their way to a more successful end. With smiles abound we walked away, rolled up our sleeves, sharpened our swords and headed towards our next meetings of repair. I feared for those we were both headed to meet. Look out, she and I were charged up and ready to attack.
Take a look at the five common things the both of us face each time we are invited to come fix what is going wrong. Denial, an unchecked ego, too much control, protecting one or more of the weaker legs of the business stool and managing fears...one of these five hurdles are waiting to be jumped. If two or more of these five hurdles are in your way, the work towards success will be more difficult to do. It was amazing how the two of us in that chance meeting came to the closing conclusion that with the repair of these five elements, most leaders would flourish well...all of the time.
Success is simple. It is the mind that is difficult.
Until next time...
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