What has Cottage Cheese got to do with your Leadership?

If you can answer that question I will be impressed! If you can’t, then make sure you read on! If you do know the answer it probably means that you are a fan of the great book by one of my all-time gurus/ heroes, Jim Collins. His famous books are renowned for being massive ‘go to’ references when leading an organisation from where it is, to where you really want it to be. His books are on the ‘must read’ list if you are serious about making an impact and achieving excellent results.

A book I encourage all my clients to get to grips with and apply the learning from is “Good to Great”. It’s a truly helpful guide to what it takes to transform your business to the higher limits of success.

There are six key elements to the core principle of the ‘flywheel model’. I’m not going to go into the whole book now, but I do want to draw your attention to the key nugget I alluded to in the heading.

“What’s cottage cheese got to do with it?” I hear you cry!

Well it’s quite simple really. Collins tells the story of the impact of leadership and the matter of those disciplined people who make an organisation great. Collins explains that the business is driven by excellent systems, which in turn, are driven by the right kind of disciplined people, who think and behave in the right kind of disciplined way.

One character Collins skilfully uses to illustrate the point of a disciplined approach is Dave Scott – a six times Hawaii triathlon champion who, every day, cycles 75 miles, swims 20,000 meters and runs 17 miles.

He is serious about his craft and practises it a lot, although that amount of activity will burn calories, no trouble. However, Dave pays attention to detail and is disciplined. He makes sure to rinse his cottage cheese to eliminate the excess fat. It’s the discipline of the habits, rituals and routines that he lives by. It’s harder for him to NOT be a master of his craft than it is for him to be it.

There is an important lesson here for all leaders who desire outstanding results. The clue is in the attention to living by the habits, rituals and routines. It’s not by chance that Dave can achieve consistently good results in a hugely demanding activity – it’s because he doesn’t leave it to chance, and neither should leaders. We all can benefit from constantly improving the odds by working at those incremental subtleties that make the difference.

What about how you greet your team? How much attention to detail do you pay to the achievers and the not so good achievers? Do you swoop in like a seagull when things aren’t good, but fail to notice when great work is produced?

Or do you avoid paying attention to detail to poor performance and hope it goes away? You know you need to relentlessly ensure that the quality of work is at the right standard – but when it’s not – what do you do about it?

Leadership is about movement, i.e. moving your people and your business forward to an improved performance. If you’d like to find out more about growing your business through expert leadership then please call. Together we can build a culture where your leadership goes from operational to inspirational. Build the right habits, rituals and routines to take your leadership further.

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E: Rachel@bespoketrainingeastbourne.com