The enemy of growth.....is ourselves

Over the past several weeks I have suggested that true differentiation is not corporate created or delivered, but in fact it is individual and collective wisdom.

If differentiation is the foundation of growth, then no differentiation = no growth.

There are many common barriers to individual and collective (organisational) wisdom.

Let's quickly explore the common ones and how you may be able to over come them.

Organisational Collective Wisdom Barriers

Peter Drucker famously said "Only three things happen naturally in organisations: friction, confusion, and underperformance".

It could be said these are the primary barriers to wisdom creation within corporations. However I believe it is deeper than just those three. It is how companies attempt to navigate these that actually creates the real barriers.

These include:

• Lack of clear, concise and communicated strategy. Often the "plan" is to merely do better than last year, by essentially doing more of the same. These plans are often written eloquently but fail to inspire meaningful change. Without such a strategy wisdom tends to gravitate to institutional knowledge.
• Cost cutting. I'm yet to sit in an economics class that stresses that a major lever for growth is to cut costs. Yes at times this is inevitable, but while cutting costs, it's unfair to then burden teams with growth targets. Hard to grow when there are less people, less assets, less things. Not impossible but pretty hard. This also tends to manifest into the work that is left is distributed across those that are left...resulting in fact less wisdom development.
• New processes will be the silver bullet. In the arena in which we advise our clients regularly we see clients embark on new sales methodologies or processes (and associated tools, such as marketing plays, play books, and CRM or sales force automation tools). This may seem like a smart move to build wisdom, but in fact it is the opposite. These do not empower people to think. They restrict people via prescriptive action. Also when everyone is doing it, they offer little true differentiation. They do help with productivity, efficiency and common vocabulary, but rarely do they deliver growth, especially via wisdom development.
• Training will fix it. The Learning and Development teams within organisations sure do carry a massive burden. They are expected to be miracle workers. The challenge is nearly all training is something that is "done to" employees. They are one and done and almost always knowledge based not training based
• Finally, and probably most importantly, leaders are not allowed to lead. They are expected to manage. Again, a lot of our advisory activities are with sales teams. Sales leaders are generally pressured to "deliver the number" for the current quarter or month. This results in massive day to day fire drill and current tactical activities. There is very little time spent on reflection, learning, thinking, curiosity or imagination. When leaders fail to lead, wisdom is the first victim.

Individual Wisdom Barriers

What's more valuable...striving for brilliance or avoiding stupidity? Charlie Munger contends the latter....avoid stupidity.

Brilliance, unicorn level brilliance is ultra rare. Stupidity on the contrary is everywhere. Individual wisdom can be found most easily in avoiding stupidity. That alone elevates you into a very unique group.

What are the common barriers to individual wisdom creation?

• Busyness. There are many reasons for this. Plenty of seemingly justifiable reasons. Less people, more work, more pressure to deliver etc etc. Organisations reward busyness. The person who puts in the hours, takes the extra projects, always gets everything done. Yet their contribution to growth might be minimal...in fact almost certainly is minimal. Busyness is generally always doing current things in current ways. Being busy means no time to change, no time to improve, no time to reflect. A busy person is not growing, they are surviving - often with a clear view that survival is not guaranteed (they might be on the next reduction list)
• Mastery. All great masters in any discipline merely ascend to the knowledge they know how much they don't know. Yet inside large corporations mastery is defined as "you've forgotten more than most people will ever learn". As tenure increases there is a heavy reliance on resting on laurels. This is the antithesis of wisdom development.
• Over reliance on the company to do the heavy lifting. There is often a quietly spoken frustration. The company is not dong enough. Not enough new and innovative products, not enough campaigns, not enough marketing, not enough training etc. When it's hard to win, it's easy to blame the company. However, as an individual one must ask, how can I win. Consider this, within the same company two people in similar roles, one can be performing above expectations and one below. Same company, same roles, same conditions, same tools, same processes and same governance. Why? One takes personal accountability for wisdom creation, the other expects the company to do it for them.
• Fear. When the pressure is on to deliver the numbers, doing things differently can be seen as risky and the first step to getting fired. Yet I have never met a CEO or C-Suite executive that said, our #1 goal is for our people to do exactly what they have done for the past few years. Every executive is looking for change. They may not articulate it that way, but a well thought through wisdom creation plan will rarely if ever get knocked back. The key is to have a plan. Just as companies should have a clear, concise, communicated strategy, individuals should have a clear, concise, communicated wisdom creation plan.

As discussed in previous articles our definition of wisdom can be seen below.

Both corporations and individuals can be outrageously successful when they actively invest and cultivate true collective and individual wisdom.

Forcefully and decisively making this the priority in time invested. Less time doing, more time learning. Only then can they truly bring differentiation to a level their competitors either can't or won't be able to match.

To achieve this there is only one path forward.

It is a belief that wisdom is the only true differentiator. It is an acceptance that we are paid to think for a living. It is a deep rooted principle that to truly operate in service of others, you must take your wisdom to beyond those you are serving.

What made you successful

won't make you successful

Only once you embrace the above beliefs can you create future success.

These beliefs are true for both companies and individuals.