You cannot move their cheese

In my first post I discussed how deliberately Catalyzing Change can be a great tool for growth and success in life. In his New York Times bestseller "Who Moved My Cheese?" and subsequent books in the series, Spencer Johnson covered "An Amazing Way to Deal with Change in Your Work and in Your Life".

This is my very brief and personal perspective on how to influence change in the world especially your family, work colleagues and teams.

As a father of two lovely teenage daughters and having worked for two decades with very talented global teams, one thing has become certain, you cannot move a leaf against the wind for too long, if at all!

Then how do you create change in this world

To create change as a father or a leader one needs to influence behavior of others and create alignment. Given what I said earlier, how can you?

Role of Incentives and Influence

First lets talk about incentives and influence!

I strongly believe financial and material incentives have depleting impact and sometimes even a negative one. For example, it is well known that salary increments to adults and gifts/toys to children have progressively reduced gratification over time and if subsequent ones do not improve on prior ones, they are perceived negatively. This challenge is especially exacerbated in an attention and supply constrained world.

On the other hand, using fear and authority to influence is even worse, especially on young children. For example, time-outs, spanking, taking stuff away etc. It creates a mindset of authoritarianism which increasingly has no place in this Millennium.

Then how do create alignment

What is alignment? Or we should ask, alignment to what?

If you look at successful leaders who have been able to run large organizations or have been parents of super achievers, a common trait is their ability to articulate the broader vision, be a coach — actually first be a player (role model) and align personal aspirations with broader goals.

Most importantly, after doing that, they have let people be and freely express themselves!

Easy to say, but extremely difficult to execute — take my word as a father. It is very tempting and easy to be prescriptive when teaching your kids work ethics, good habits especially sleeping, time on technology, morality and list goes on. As a lot of you know, children do not listen, they observe!

May be it is not about alignment at all?

I am learning that more important than alignment, is inner motivation and ownership of outcomes.

Let this really sink in — in my opinion, this may be the true catalyst to achievement!

So don’t even teach some one to fish (let alone give them fish), but rather push them to ask “why”. Simon Sinek and others have covered this in their books and talks, on the reason everything in life should start with a “why”.

So ask yourself, “why” do you do what you do and “why” is it important that you need to do it well?

Once you have a strong “why” in life, the what and how take care of themselves as long as you remain focused and aligned to that personal why.

I will end with what this means to us as a leader, a father and a friend — noticed how I have left husband out of the list, wink wink?;-)

As a leader, it is very important to have a well defined mission (the “why”) for your organization and then coach leaders to explore their personal visions and goals to align to that mission.

As a father and friend, it is important to first have your own “why” in life, your true north. Your children and others around you will notice it. Only then, can you be a good coach to help those you love progress in their personal journey of exploring the meaning of their life, their “why”.