Jolt! (12 page)

Knowledge and intelligence are wonderful assets. Obviously, the more someone knows, the more potential he or she has for weighing the facts, understanding different perspectives, and making good decisions. But growth is more than just learning information. The truth is, universities are filled with brilliant people who are personal failures. Our greatest innovators and most creative people aren't always the smartest. In studying leadership over the years, I've discovered that the greatest leaders aren't always the most intelligent executives in the company. In Hollywood, the most brilliant artists and filmmakers are often miserable failures in their personal and family lives.

» KNOWLEDGE IS IMPORTANT, BUT THE REAL ASSET IS GROWTH.

Growth is what we do with knowledge. Growth is where we take our knowledge, how we apply it, and how we use it in our everyday lives.

Leadership expert John Maxwell taught me long ago to change my orientation from
goals
to
growth
. When he said those words, it was a revelation. I'd always learned that goals were important, and I tried and tried to use a system of reaching goals, but I'd always struggled with it. I could see that goals motivated lots of people and helped focus their energy, but reaching goals always left me empty and unsatisfied.

But when John showed me how to focus my attention on
growth
, everything suddenly fell into place. The process taught me that goals are great, but when we reach a goal, we're finished. But with growth, it's a never-ending process—always learning, always moving forward, and always achieving.

I hope that when I reach the end of my life, there will be a couple of good books on my nightstand. I want to learn and grow until my last breath.

Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other.
—JOHN F. KENNEDY, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES

Since first hearing about the importance of growth, I've patterned my life around that concept. Ten years after graduating from college, I earned a master's degree, and twenty-six years after college, I earned a PhD. A few years ago, I switched from a PC to a Mac, and I still practice the piano. I'm no genius. It will take a while to get this Mac thing down, and I'll never play piano well enough to stop the dog from barking, but the point is I'm continuing to grow and expand my experiences, knowledge, and expertise.

Look at the people in your company or in your circle of friends. Why do some succeed and others seem to stagnate? Why do some move to higher and higher levels of achievement, while others stay at the same place for years at a time?

Many people blame the system, the company, or their boss. They blame society, their upbringing, or their past. But a lifetime plan for growth can break through barriers and can overcome nearly any obstacle in your life.

Learning is not compulsory . . . neither is survival.
—W. EDWARDS DEMING, MANAGEMENT CONSULTANT

FOUR SIGNS OF STAGNANT GROWTH

1. You lack influence.

You should begin a plan for personal growth immediately if you find you're not influencing decisions, directions, or people. Are friends asking for your advice and then actually listening to you? Do coworkers and associates care about your opinion? Lack of influence is the first sign of stagnant growth.

If you're not bringing new ideas and information to the table on a regular basis, people will start to look elsewhere, and you will soon be marginalized within the company.

» GROWTH-ORIENTED ORGANIZATIONS REQUIRE GROWTH-ORIENTED LEADERSHIP.

It's been said that today business moves at the speed of change. New ideas, technology, leadership techniques, financial models, sales principles, and ways to communicate are being discussed, evaluated, and tested. Company leadership is looking for men and women who aren't just automatons. They're looking for original thinkers, people who go beyond the normal workplace interactions and find new solutions.

Become the go-to guy when it comes to answers and ideas. Be the person who knows how to find new information and who can provide innovative insights and perspectives.

How do you find those ideas?

First, learn where the best ideas in your business come from and spend more time there. I'm not talking about glancing at your monthly trade magazine— it's much more than that. Start with cross-pollinating. Bees spend their lives moving from flower to flower, taking the pollen from one source to another.

What happens?

Growth! Because bees are spreading the pollen around the garden, more flowers start growing, and it becomes a more beautiful place. In life, cross-pollinating means finding information from multiple sources and spreading it out in different ways to different people.

In other words—start looking for answers in unexpected places.

For instance, finding answers to the challenges my media clients face often takes me to history books, computer manuals, magazines on acting, or leadership studies. When faced with a management challenge, I'll often study the lives of military generals and learn about the decisions they made on the battlefield.

Station M

In learning about change, one of the first places I looked was the life of British stage magician Jasper Maskelyne. In 1983, I read David Fisher's remarkable book on Maskelyne's life—
The War Magician
. Maskelyne came from a long line of stage magicians in Britain. When World War II began, his career was at its peak. As he thought about the war effort from a magician's perspective, he realized there were areas he could contribute. Although he was past the normal age for soldiers, he closed up his show and signed up as a private in the British army.

His first personal battle was to convince the military leadership that his ideas would work. Most of the generals were great students of war and had studied it all their lives, so for a
magician
, of all people, to tell them how to approach war from a new perspective was bold, but Maskelyne persisted and managed to get himself and his team into the camouflage department.

The rest is history. Fisher tells the amazing story of how the magician was sent to North Africa, where he used his skills against the Germans to conduct one of the strangest and most bizarre campaigns in the history of warfare.

Using his unusual magical skills, he made the Suez Canal disappear, moved Alexandria Harbor, turned tanks into broken-down trucks, created a shadow army, launched a phantom fleet of submarines, and made the enemy think they were facing a seven-hundred-foot battleship. His team used their inventiveness to create escape kits for prisoners of war, build a mini-submarine that sank a cargo ship, and perfect a special fire-retardant paste that saved the lives of hundreds of fliers.

Jasper Maskelyne spent his whole life trying to change the thinking of people who were hopelessly stuck with an old paradigm. As a master of illusion, his job was to convince people of the impossible and to make the visible, invisible. He had to change the thinking of the public, military generals, and finally, the Nazi army in North Africa.

Keep in mind, he wasn't a military man. When the war started, he had no experience in military affairs and didn't know the first thing about life in the army. But he understood the power of growth and was willing to learn. He established the legendary Station “M”—with the “M” standing for “magic”— where he created a top-secret department building illusions that were used in the global war effort. His work was so important that Hitler's Gestapo added his name to their infamous “Black List,” where a price was put on his head. He was so inventive that the Allies kept his illusions in a secret file until nearly forty years after the war.

As a result, after the war he retired at the rank of major and served in sixteen countries, including India, Burma, Malaya, and the Balkans.

Maskelyne understood the power of change—especially the importance of personal growth. He spent his entire life learning, and when he finally died in Kenya in 1973, he had played a significant part in the Allied victory in World War II, created devices that would continue to be used for decades to come, worked for the Kenyan police during the Mau Mau uprising of the 1950s, and managed the Kenyan National Theater. From stage magic to military victory, inventions, police work, and drama, Jasper Maskelyne's life was the story of creativity and personal growth.

I have probably applied more insights from his life to areas like personal change and what I call “crisis creativity” than from any other person.

2. You are not being promoted.

The second indicator of the need to explore personal growth is that you are not being promoted. In corporate culture, the higher the position, the less “doing” happens and the more “thinking” comes into play. Look at a typical corporate conference room during major meetings. The foot soldiers of the company bring in their laptops, briefcases, and sometimes boxes of files, but the president rarely comes into the room holding anything at all.

Why? The president isn't hired to run a computer, keep a schedule, or manage files. He's hired because of the power of his ideas.

Promotions generally go to the men and women who exhibit extraordinary growth, because companies want people in leadership who simply have the best ideas.

Start generating new ideas, and see how quickly you get noticed.

3. You have lost interest in your job.

The third indicator of the need for growth is that you have lost interest in your job or career. Most people think this comes from being in one job too long, going through a midlife crisis, or even the need for some other type of major life change.

» MOST PEOPLE LOSE INTEREST IN THEIR JOBS BECAUSE THEY LOSE INTEREST IN GROWING.

Look at the people who have the highest levels of intensity and creativity. Generally they are people who are the most passionate about their chosen industry or field. They don't care about the specifics of their job as much as they care about the “big picture” of their field.

I have a friend who teaches film at a university. Although he's quite good at teaching students, grading papers, and setting up classes, his real passion is the movies. He can discuss major films, cultural issues, and the lives of great filmmakers for hours. His daily job is the normal routine of teaching and running a classroom. But his great passion is the subject he teaches. He'll never get tired of teaching or the people he works with, because his life is filled with passion.

Sure, you may get tired of office politics, company forms, office routine, or dealing with clients. I would have to say that, for most of us, the routine aspects of any job can get pretty tedious. But when you're on a personal arc of growth, your passion becomes so much greater. When others are getting bogged down in daily routine, growing people are swinging for a much farther fence. These are people who are growing, learning, and expanding their experience— people who never lose interest in their work.

Overcome your daily routine with a passionate journey of personal growth. Spend as much time expanding your knowledge and experience as you spend on the mundane, and see if your interest levels and excitement don't change for the better.

4. You don't enjoy your coworkers and associates.

A fourth sign is that you don't enjoy your coworkers and associates. One of the most difficult frustrations in the workplace is the (often sudden) feeling that you're growing tired of your coworkers. In most cases, this is another symptom of lack of growth, and it has much to do with the first issue of influence. When you're the go-to person, everyone at work seeks you out. They want your advice and expertise on a myriad of issues and concerns. But when you stop growing, the focus shifts to someone else. Personal growth keeps you focused on people and keeps them focused on you.

Learning is not attained by chance, it must be sought for with ardor and attended to with diligence.
—ABIGAIL ADAMS, FIRST LADY

A life of continual growth is a deliberate plan that requires real effort but can be accomplished by anyone with a sincere desire to expand his or her knowledge and experience.

Where do you start? First, set aside thirty minutes to an hour each day for personal growth. Find the same location if possible—at the office or at home— and dedicate a certain time for pursuing this goal. You might like to get up a little earlier in the morning or do it on your lunch hour, or perhaps it would be more convenient right before bedtime. The time and place don't matter—the important thing is that you stick to it. As I mentioned before, I would encourage you to find the optimum part of the day for your best work. Perhaps you're like me and find that the morning hours are the best time of your day. Other people are afternoon people, and some prefer “rock star hours” late at night.

I pursue growth at two levels: the business level and the leadership level. At the business level, I make it a point to stay up-to-date with my particular industry. You don't have to know everything that goes on in your business, but keeping a working knowledge of the latest breakthroughs, news, and information is vital. To accomplish this, I keep a stack of trade magazines and publications next to my desk. Whenever I have any time to myself—in a doctor's waiting room, on a plane, in a hotel, or waiting for an appointment, I'll pick up a magazine and go through it. This isn't in-depth reading, and it has more to do with “skimming” to look for trends, new ideas, and news. A well-designed RSS strategy is powerful as well. RSS allows you to scan multiple news sources, magazines, and blogs in a remarkably short time. In my case, I set up multiple RSS feeds on different subjects, so I can easily scan the latest information based on different areas of interest.

At the leadership level, I focus on publications and information that help me understand the bigger-picture issues, like vision, spirituality, motivation, and the greater business landscape. All of these ideas are poured into my online blog at
philcooke.com
.