"I'm going 60!"

“It’s easy to become dulled to danger when everything is working.”

~ Whitney Johnson , Disrupt Yourself

In a recent interview with Katie Anderson , I was asked, “Why should an experienced manager read another leadership book?”?My response was a paraphrasing of the following story from How We Go .

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Like most grandfathers, mine was a storyteller. ?Spend more than a few minutes with him, and he’d certainly start telling you one of his fishing, hunting, or Navy stories. ?He told them so frequently that it became somewhat of a joke among the grandkids how many times we had heard the same stories. ?And every time he told a story again, he would tell it as if you’d never heard it before. ?Now that he’s gone, I’m so glad he told the same stories over and over again. ?His stories are what I remember most about him.

One of my favorite stories comes from a time when he was serving as a sheriff in a small town called Brady in the state of Montana. ?The town was so small my mother’s graduating class consisted of only twenty-four students. ?The town had one stop sign, one small church, and three bars. ?Most of the residents of Brady were farmers and ranchers. ?It was the type of town where everyone knew each other on a personal level.

One night, my grandfather, known by most as Dick, was patrolling the outskirts of town when he came across a car pulled off the road with its lights on. ?He pulled up behind the car and got out to check on the driver. ?He recognized the car and knew that it belonged to an elderly man from town. ?As he approached, he could see that the car’s headlights were shining down the road ahead, and the driver was sitting upright in his seat.

As he walked up to the driver’s side window, he realized that not only were the headlights on but that the engine was revving and the rear wheels were spinning in mid-air. ?The car had pulled off the road right at the point where the road crossed a set of railroad tracks. ?It had become high-centered on the tracks, and the wheels were no longer making contact with the ground. ?The driver was holding the steering wheel firmly and carefully, keeping the speedometer as close to the speed limit as possible.

My grandfather tapped on the window, and the driver jumped. ?At first, he kept his eyes on the road ahead, seemingly reluctant to look over at who was tapping on his window. ?But after my grandfather tapped on the window a second time, the driver looked over at him with an expression of both alarm and confusion. ?He looked down at the speedometer and then back up at the road. ?After a third knock on the window, the driver finally rolled down the window, looked at my grandfather then down at the speedometer. ?Then he looked up at my grandfather again and, with serious concern in his voice, yelled, “What are you doing, Dick? ?I’m going sixty!”

The driver, of course, was intoxicated and had no idea his car was high-centered on the railroad tracks. ?From his perspective in the driver’s seat, he saw the headlights shining down the road ahead, he had his hands on the steering wheel, his foot on the gas, and he was maintaining the correct speed. ?But he had no idea he was just spinning his wheels without making any real progress until his perspective was challenged.

Many organizations exist in a similar state of denial. ?Past successes create a state of intoxication in which an organization believes it can simply go on doing what it has always done and continue enjoying the same success. ?The leaders of the organization, with their hands tightly gripping the steering wheel, work to maintain a consistent direction and speed. ?It often takes their perspective being disrupted for them to realize that they may not really be making any valuable progress at all.

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It’s critical that we all take time to disrupt ourselves, challenge our biases, and explore new perspectives. That's why I love reading leadership books. They challenge my perspective.

Link to the full interview with Katie Anderson.

Katie has a lot of great videos to explore on her YouTube channel!

I also highly recommend Katie's book, Learning to Lead, Leading to Learn.

#leadership #leadershipdevelopment #howwego