#ideasgenius

I was recently asked to write a few words as an introduction to a book. I thought I would share it:

'Like any discipline, Leadership is a journey. It is a process of time and experience, belief and will, trial after failure. The leader you’re going to be is entirely based on your unique set of physical, emotional, psychological and spiritual settings. Often it can be in spite of those same traits.

A great teacher once said that project management is like juggling eggs. In that same context, Leadership is ensuring those eggs don’t fall. Part of your roles as a leader is directive; giving each egg enough energy and direction to go up in the air. There is also a role to delegate; to let go of the eggs with the secure knowledge that because you have understood the properties and abilities of your eggs, you can allow them to travel through the air unaided. You trust that they will come down where you expect them to. That is also the final part of your role. You are there to catch and support them when they come down.

If you have little experience of being a leader, that description may seem odd to you. After all, aren’t you the one who is in charge? Aren’t you the boss? The head honcho? The if-I-say-jump-you-say-how-high guy? Those are only effects of good leadership. You become the respected and listened-to one because you are a good leader. It’s not the other way round. Those come because you are recognised by your team as someone who can keep everyone on the winning side. Acting important without mastering good leadership is like trying to cough enough times so you can catch a cold. It’s not going to happen. You will meet those kinds of people on your journey. No one wants to work with them.

This book lays down the rudimentary foundations of the aspect of leading spiritually. So here’s the first secret… all leadership is spiritual. Managers can get away with moving tasks and targets around with money or manpower to get the job done. A leader relies on trust, hope and faith in their team and their desired outcomes. Understanding the areas highlighted in each chapter will bring you closer to mastering the full set of spiritual tools needed to be a winner. Think of these as the top line headings and use them as a template to explore deeper your own style of leadership - no matter what your beliefs are.

There’s one final thing to say about your journey into leadership. If you have to tell people you’re a good leader, you’re not a good leader. They should know what you are by the way they interact with you and feel when they are in your team. Think of it another way, do you ever wonder about the DJ in the club who is constantly telling you to get up, get on the dance floor, put your hands up, make some noise? Well, if they were a good DJ would you not be doing those things already? If they have to remind you to get on the floor and enjoy yourself, surely there is something missing.

One of the things I loved about growing up in the 90s was discovering ‘The Rewind’. That moment at the party when the crowd responds loudly to a song and the DJ spins it back to the beginning. Oh man, that was a lot of fun. However it was often not so much fun for the DJ whose responsibility it was to get that moment right. There's nothing more tense than a rewind followed by an  awkward silence while he (or she) struggles to find the beginning of the record. Trust me, it’s a lot of pressure when you’ve got a room full of eyes glaring at you while they wait for the party to start again.

The last few months have felt like a long rewind moment for me. There's been the excitement of retraining for a new career, taking on new projects and new responsibilities. At the same time, there’s the angst around trying to refocus and head off in a brand new direction. 

You see, the rewind bit is relatively easy. You can stop doing what you were doing... with the right motivation. Maybe it is the promise of a brighter future or the relief from a challenging past. However the tricky part is setting yourself up doing something new. There’s likely to be questions like: 

Will I make it in this new venture?

Is this the right decision right now?

How will I match the financial or emotional security of the previous job, and of course 

What happens if I fail? 

Just like the nervous DJ, you have a number of tools at your disposal to help make the resetting and restarting process as painless as possible. DJs have their headphones, and all kinds of meters, markers and faders which when used appropriately helps them get the party restarted with little interruption to the good vibe. 

The hardest part of writing a book is not starting it; it’s completing it. This is because somewhere on route, from the first to the last page, we get a little lost. What begins as an exciting burst of creative energy fizzles into a dull fraction of your incomplete work. What happened?

It works like this: If I plan to get to Manchester from London, I don’t simply start driving until I run out of steam. It’s good to have a destination and key milestones on route. I know I’ll need to go via either the M40 or the M1. Then when I get to Birmingham, I consider, do I take the M6 or the Toll road?

With our 13 Step Book Plan, you stand a better chance of reaching those milestones on route to your completed book. You’ll need a pen and pad for this (or computer, however our preference is actually writing it out). Here goes:

Write the numbers 1 to 13 along one side of a piece of paper. These will be the numbers for thirteen sentences you're about to create, so give yourself plenty of space.

2. The Beginning. Write a sentence about how you want your book to start next to number 1. The characters, location, expertise or knowledge that you want the reader to know in the beginning. If you’re writing a novel about a person on a self-discovery journey, where will they start? What is their current emotional state? If it’s a business manual think about what level of knowledge you expect from your typical reader? If you’re teaching a new method, what should they already know: do they have a degree in Management, have they worked in a business or know nothing at all? Write it as a single sentence, e.g. The reader has never written a business plan or Marcel is about to have his life changed by the mysterious girl on the bus.

3. The End. How will the book end? What’s the last thing you want to communicate before your reader closes the last page? What is the big revelation or the nugget of wisdom and experience that you want to share? Try to communicate that as the sentence that just goes just before the words ‘The End’. Write this out next to number 13. For example: And they lived together in Barbados for the rest of their lives… or So now you know everything you need to make vegan burgers.

4. Meet Me Halfway. Consider the middle point between the beginning and the end. Halfway through the book, what do you want -to- the reader to know? Write a sentence next to number 6 which states By this stage of the book… we will know the heroine’s secret or we should understand the difference between Dating and Courting or I have introduced my mediation technique. Remember it’s about being halfway through the physical pages of the book, not necessarily of your story. This is the 50 page mark if your story book is 100 pages long. You don’t need to count pages, just have a sense of what you want to have written about when halfway through.

5. Half the Halves. Do the same for the points midway between the beginning and the middle (i.e. number 4) and halfway between the middle and the end (i.e. number 10). Again write a By this stage of the book… sentence about what you want to be saying a quarter and three-quarters into your masterpiece.

6. Step It Up. You will have two empty numbers between each of the major milestones of your book. Think of these as two steps to get from one stage to the other. Write in here two important moments or bits of information which will follow each other to get from the beginning to the quarter mark, then quarter to the halfway mark… and so on. You will find that this is where a lot of your thinking, rethinking, changing, rewriting etc. happens. That’s fine. All your thoughts here are helping you really define your story. When you come to write the book itself, you will find that you’ve already had those random thoughts and are less likely to go off track. 

7. The End. Yes, that’s your 13 Step Book Plan. If you’ve put all your energies into getting this part right, you will find the process of writing feels smoother than previous attempts.

You start out on your creative and ambitious journey with high hopes. The sky is the limit, and you’ve got just what the world needs to make it a better place. You make the best cupcakes. You are a genius with raising capital. You are the best motivational speaker for your target audience. In short, you’ve found your purpose in life! You sell most of everything you’ve got and invest heavily into your business or career. Good? Great!

Then something happens. As you work through it, there are a few new things you discover. Things are not exactly how they first appeared. This isn’t a bad thing. Often after immersing yourself deeper into something, you discover so much more. Your original idea was just the tip of the iceberg. You can do so much more here! On the other hand, after spending some time in the reality of your ambition, you realise it is not quite what you expected.

Now what do you do? No one wants to appear to be making a u-turn. Would your stakeholders, fellow investors, family, friends and haters see you as flighty or as a failure? Would they say of you that you lack commitment or, worse, your vision was shaky to begin with?

Take heart. The first thing to recognise is that you know more than anyone else about what is truly happening. If you have seen a better opportunity for your business, then it is in your interest in the long run to explore it. Also, if you have misjudged your original vision, the best thing you could do for yourself is reconsider.

In the creative relationship, there are three parts: you, the business and your idea or vision. Ideally, all three will be in harmony. When they are out of sync, a decision has to be made. When minor adjustments does not bring it all back together again, it might be time to upgrade your vision.

Here are some suggestions of how to handle it:

Check your emotions. What you might be experiencing is excitement about new opportunities. There isn’t anything specifically wrong with your first goal. You’re simply enthusing about a new challenge. Put it to the side for a while; you might feel differently about it later.

Build on idea one. Consider whether this is an add-on to your current ambitions rather than a brand new idea. Some things might take time to build and your first idea might be the foundation for a bigger opportunity. It will give you more contacts and credibility in for the future.

Compare both visions. Be rigorous with evaluating the benefits and costs of both options - with the same criteria. Compare like with like, rather than like with love. It will help to write them out with equal depth. Be very honest with yourself here. It may help to do this with someone objective.

Sell on or shut down. Your original thought was a good one, although it might not be the best one for you. You may not be the best person to take it forward. Is there anyone else excited about it that you can hand it on to? You could consider licensing it to someone, selling it on or closing down the business completely.

There was once a businessman who was sitting by the beach in a small Brazilian village.

As he sat, he saw a Brazilian fisherman rowing a small boat towards the shore having caught quite few big fish. The businessman was impressed and asked the fisherman, “How long does it take you to catch so many fish?”

The fisherman replied, “Oh, just a short while.” “Then why don’t you stay longer at sea and catch even more?”

The businessman was astonished. “This is enough to feed my whole family,” the fisherman said. The businessman then asked, “So, what do you do for the rest of the day?”

The fisherman replied, “Well, I usually wake up early in the morning, go out to sea and catch a few fish, then go back and play with my kids. In the afternoon, I take a nap with my wife, and evening comes, I join my buddies in the village for a drink — we play guitar, sing and dance throughout the night.”

The businessman offered a suggestion to the fisherman. “I am a PhD in business management. I could help you to become a more successful person. From now on, you should spend more time at sea and try to catch as many fish as possible. When you have saved enough money, you could buy a bigger boat and catch even more fish. Soon you will be able to afford to buy more boats, set up your own company, your own production plant for canned food and distribution network. By then, you will have moved out of this village and to Sao Paulo, where you can set up HQ to manage your other branches.”

The fisherman continues, “And after that?”