I am a great
admirer of the work of Dr Steve Peters and his life-changing book, The Chimp
Paradox. For those of you who don’t
know, Professor Peters is a consultant psychiatrist who advised the very
successful Team GB cycling team at the 2012 Olympics as well as many other
elite athletes.
Reluctant as I
am I have to take a very minor issue with Dr Peters. In the book he suggests that we can’t win all
the time and the important objective is always to put in maximum effort and do
our best.
We can’t argue
with that as an aim but my query is, how do we know what is our best?
Some time ago I
was inducted into a fitness programme that included some fiendish exercises to
increase mobility. One of these methods of torture involved sitting on the
floor, legs outstretched, and reaching forward with both arms, the resulting position being
measured.
Creaking a
little I attempted the best possible result that turned out to be no better than average to
say the least. The instructor insisted that I could do much better and suggested
that another 20 cm was attainable.
He then
exhorted me to concentrate on this new mark, visualise it being attained then
go for it. This I did and succeeded
easily much to my astonishment.
Again the
question, is how do we know our real potential unless it is tested?
Athletes use
the visualising process to increase their performance and at the top level they
are able to achieve great feats.
There is no
reason why these techniques cannot be transmitted and used in business and
indeed in everyday life. Moreover it doesn’t always need to be in physical
terms.
More often we
set goals and objectives that in retrospect are easily attained with minimum
effort. Ask yourself does the successful
achievement of your goal drive things forward or merely strengthen the status
quo?
If the answer
is the latter then you are in danger of digging yourself deeper into the
comfort zone.
In Vistage we
like challenge. Goals and objectives we consider need to be stretched if not to
the limit at least enough to make their achievement significant. We use the
acronym B-HAG or Big Hairy Audacious Goals (that being the clean version).
I was told a
story by a colleague in the USA of a food company that was in need of an
injection of energy. Turnover was around $20m and when asked for his projection
for next year the CEO just added 10% because he could do that in his head.
The consultant
demurred and said that he thought a better objective would be $40m. This elicited all the usual arguments against
such a ridiculous idea until it was suggested that they look at it another way.
They asked that
if they were to have $40m as the objective then what would they need to do in
the way of resources in order to achieve it?
Please note
they didn’t ask how are we going to do that?
A “how” question in that context is almost negative in its intent.
After some
discussion the CEO put the question to his team and they went for it. They did
the analysis and failed to achieve the goal. They did however hit $37.5m and
that is not bad at all.
A caveat says
that if you go for a goal that is manifestly impossible to achieve then it will
only create dissatisfaction. Far better
to make your objectives SMART, that is Specific, Measurable, Achievable,
Relevant and Time-based.
That way the
goals can be stretched way out of the comfort zone to next level. To say the least this gives a great sense of
achievement all round and it proves that we don’t always know the true level of
our abilities.
Vistage keynote
speaker Dr Balaji Krishnamurthy says that the primary function of leadership is
to release the potential in people, intentionally.
For your next
project set a B-HAG and go for it after first selling the idea to the team.
Then make sure that you all celebrate the eventual success.
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