On the Importance of Being Unimportant

Paradox is wisdom's favourite language. So perchance, allow me to share a paradox that I've found to be a most reliable compass in my life and career:

Business is a game - to truly enjoy it, you must take it seriously.
Life is not a game - to truly enjoy it, you must approach it playfully.

I know this sounds like the inane profundities you are apt to find inside a fortune cookie at your local Chinese restaurant, but please bear with me. 

What we call "work" or "career" is actually made of two parts: the manifold transactions of business, and that messy thing that arises when we deal repeatedly with other people called "relationships". My humble counsel is that to get the most enjoyment out of each, you should approach the former with a sense of seriousness while approaching the latter with a sense of playfulness.

Where there is ego there can be no real relationships and therefore no trust.

Business is a game people choose to play: the object is money, and the scoreboard is profit. In this sense, it shares much with its happy bedfellow, competitive sports. Does it really matter if the fluffy yellow ball lands inside the line or just outside it? Not in the slightest, but it sure is fun pretending (for a few hours) that it does.  

I'm not saying that you can't enjoy a casual game of tennis or a casual approach to business – I’m merely arguing that you can't get the maximum enjoyment out of tennis or business without focusing with all your might to win. We may all sometimes choose to cruise for a while at work – but nothing beats the enjoyment of working intensely on a big deal against a competitive field under time pressure (especially when we win!) 

Relationships, on the other hand, really do matter – but paradoxically, you should approach them playfully. The most important work relationships are long-term relationships: those between team members (i.e. "corporate culture") as well as relationships with trusted long term clients and suppliers. If your dominant approach to these relationships is to be intense and self-important, you will not achieve real or lasting connection (i.e. "trust") and your relationships will be utterly without enjoyment.

Now when it comes to corporate culture - as goes the leader, so goes the team. If the leader's dominant approach is to be serious and self important, to never admit vulnerability or laugh at their mistakes - then the corporate culture will be steeped in ego, and ego is nothing less than a cancer to culture. 

Where there is ego there can be no real relationships and therefore no trust. And without trust, politics takes over and you can't even relax, let alone have fun.

I have a well-earned reputation at EG for being absent-minded, having the distinction of once turning up for an international business flight without my passport. Recently, on two separate occasions, following an early morning swim with a couple of my colleagues - I've forgotten to bring my business shoes and, would you believe, even forgotten my suit pants. Rather than drive home and hide my folly, I marched into the office with a sheepish grin to face the music. Here's one of pictures that the team sent around the office following my no-pants amnesia, which is still hanging on our walls today.

My point is this: if you walk into an office and its walls are full of moribund, high brow corporate values and no playfulness - then avoid this company like the plague. Nothing is more miserable and more insufferable than a team that takes itself too seriously. Such a culture produces unhappy people - the good people soon leave and what remains are the defeated and the resigned. Not a pretty sight.

Ralph Nader once made an amazingly insightful comment about leadership: "The true test of any leader" he said "is not whether he can create followers but whether he can create other leaders." Spot on. And here's what I know for sure: never does a self-important leader create anything other than followers. Egotistical leaders build cultures based on fear of failure and the need to maintain the "perception of perfection".

Ego and self-importance are the enemies of great corporate culture.

One of my favourite anecdotes to illustrate the importance of being unimportant comes from Australian cricketing folklore. In the so-called Bodyline series, the English captain (Douglas Jardine) played and missed a ball that went through to the keeper. The Aussies lamented their bad luck and one of them yelled out: "You lucky bastard" and another "No, just a bastard." At the end of play, Jardine knocked on the door of the Australian dressing room to demand an apology from his Australian counterpart (Bill Woodfull). Without skipping a beat, Woodfull turned around to his team mates and said: "Fair enough, which one of you bastards called this bastard a bastard?" In one quip, he deflated Jardine's sense of self-importance and reminded him that it was utterly out of place to take yourself so seriously off the field. If you haven't already seen it, check out this clip from "Bodyline", a mini-series produced by the ABC.

And so when you're interviewing people who wish to join your team, be careful not to make the interviews formal, serious affairs. Make fun of yourself and your colleagues to see if the candidate laughs along. Better still, throw a few curve balls their way to see if they have the ability to laugh at themselves. And, after allowing for nerves, if they can't even smile at themselves - don't hire them, they will hang like an albatross around your team's neck.

Ego and self-importance are the enemies of great corporate culture. Don't go gently into that smileless night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light of heart.

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Adam Geha is CEO and co-founder of EG, a leading fund management group that has significantly out-performed its peers through an uncompromising commitment to alignment and its proprietary risk management system (PRISMS?).

To find out more, visit:www.eg.com.au or connect with Adam on LinkedIn or follow on Twitter.

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