By Bruce Rosenstein
CHAPTER 3 – BECOME YOUR OWN SUCCESSOR
Working
Smarter: Support Tools, for Transformation
Jesse Lyn Stoner, founder of Seapoint Center, is one of the
most impressive people working in the field of leadership development. She has
extensive experience as an executive, educator, consultant, coach, and writer.
She is highly generative and generous and makes a profound connection with the
readers of her blog. She was formerly with the Ken Blanchard Companies and
coauthored a best-selling book, Full-Steam
Ahead! (2011),
with Ken Blanchard, a management expert and best-selling author.
In discussing Drucker’s concept of a knowledge worker, and
what that means in today’s world and for the future, Stoner told me:
Until now, knowledge workers have been defined by the amount
and type of their formal education. However, the differentiating factor is
knowledge, not the system that provides it. One of the transformations brought
about by the Internet is the availability of free information and with it the
opportunity to learn in nonformal ways. I believe that the current education
system will need to reinvent itself and will not be the “bestower” of the real
knowledge workers in the future, and, in fact, might not even be now.
She shared her viewpoint that knowledge does not exist
without a network or context to hold it. Individuals cannot hold knowledge and
be useful to the system unless they share it. Collaboration is a fundamental
underpinning of success. Therefore, knowledge of how to collaborate is as
important as having content knowledge. We cannot create the future as
individuals, but only through networks of shared meaning. Diversity of thought
and perspective is as essential as biodiversity for successful endeavors.
I am impressed with her emphasis on the creation of meaning
and its relation to a better future for all. “In my work in helping leaders
create a shared vision,” she said, “I emphasize that we must dig below our
assumptions to find what we most deeply desire. Vision leadership is not about
selling a vision to the people. It is about connecting with what they deeply
care about and illuminating it consciously. This was the brilliance of Martin
Luther King Jr.”
Stoner emphasizes an approach that is driven by curiosity and
the willingness to continue discovering. Although I help people create a
vision, I also explain that you actually never achieve it. The closer you get
to it, the better you understand it, and the larger it becomes. When I discuss
characteristics of a compelling vision I explain that a vision should not be
about beating the competition. Where do you go after the race is over? It’s
about being the best you can be. It’s not about being number one, because,
again, that defines you in terms of your competition instead of where you are
going. In fact, the closer you get to your vision, the clearer the magnitude
and meaning of the vision become, and it enlarges. There is no such thing as a
five-year vision, only a five-year goal. The vision is what answers What’s
next? after that goal is achieved.
Systematic Abandonment and Kaizen for Individuals: Remove and Improve
Although we will discuss the cycle of
systematic abandonment and kaizen for organizations in Chapter 4,
these business philosophies can and should be applied to individuals also.
Drucker wrote often about systematic (or planned) abandonment. Simply put, it
requires that you regularly ask yourself, if you were not already doing a
particular activity, knowing what you know now about it, would you start doing
it? If the answer is no, think of ways to change the situation. Perhaps you can
delegate the activity, or the amount of time it takes can be gradually
decreased. Perhaps you can stop doing it altogether.
Drucker believed that systematic abandonment and kaizen
worked well together, since, if you have deemed an activity worth keeping, it
should be done even better in the future. In his 1992 Harvard Business
Review article
“The New Society of Organizations,” Drucker writes:
Every artist throughout history has practiced kaizen, or
organized, continuous self-improvement. But so far only the Japanese—perhaps
because of their Zen tradition—have embodied it in the daily life and work of
their business organizations (although not in their singularly change-resistant
universities). The aim of kaizen is to improve a product or service so that it
becomes a truly different product or service in two or three years’ time.
You can practice kaizen, even if you don’t call it that, if
you are steadily, by trial and error, improving what you do on a daily basis.
Small changes can add up to significant improvements.
The idea of using kaizen in a personal sense has become more
widespread in recent years. The Japan-based designer Garr Reynolds has
described it in this context on the influential “Presentation Zen” blog.
Consistent with my premise that creating your future is an approach to life, Reynolds
also calls kaizen an approach. “The overriding principle of kaizen is that it
is daily, continuous, steady, and it takes the long-term view. Kaizen also
requires a commitment and a strong willingness to change,” he writes.
Although Reynolds alluded to kaizen for designers, his ideas
can be applied to almost any work. He emphasizes that kaizen is long-term and
never-ending. You have to become comfortable with the idea that you never
really arrive; you are always on the journey. Echoing what we learned from
Bruna Martinuzzi in Chapter 1, Reynolds recommends adopting the Zen concept of a
beginner’s mind. This helps you become more open and receptive to new ideas and
concepts because you are not jaded and hobbled by your own experience and
preconceptions. Being mindful and aware, looking at things afresh, is a
sensible and practical way to approach the future.
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