Way back in 1997, when I attended a month long course in the beautiful mountains of Colorado, at Winter Park, I met with Jane Rogers. A very brave English lady who migrated earlier to Nova Scotia, Canada, with her family followed the same course to improve her skills. We shared a few meals together and exchanged views on raising a family.
Few months after, Jane got in touch with me and requested for some assistance for her son, Joe who just graduated from university in marketing & psychology. Joe wanted to have some international experience before starting a career. After we set up a meeting in Montreal Canada, Joe decided to take up the challenge of spending a year at Rogers & company as a management trainee at the Consumer & Retail cluster.
During his year in little Mauritius, he had the opportunity to work on different projects to hone his skills. The small and almost intimate surrounding of the Mauritian business environment yielded a large and enriching experience to him. It was possible to learn from many sectors of the business and to have a first hand experience in different fields: Fuji photoshops, white goods retailing, supermarkets, car dealership…etc..
He thereafter found no difficulty in securing a job at Leeds, in the UK in a business strategy and design consultancy firm. Today he is heading the Australian branch of an international firm renowned for having won numerous awards.
The good news is that after at absence of 7 years, Joe is back for a short surf and kite surfing holiday. Joe renewed with his friends and rekindled the friendship with the lot he left to pursuit his career.
Last week, I met him with great pleasure. He has become an international businessman braving the big names of the industry he wages in. Steadily and surely he is climbing the ladder of success. Now based in Melbourne, he has managed to double up the size of his branch in less than a year and a half and captured markets of big names of the like of Nike, Coles, Fronterra….
Joe yesterday shared his experience with a group of entrepreneurs. He focused particularly on his thinking for the “Coles Chain of supermarkets: Creating emotions to the brand. “What are you famous for?†was the take home punch line of his enriching presentation.
Thank you Joe.
Your true feeling of success will only come from what you give to the world through your work and love. Entertainment is based on what you can get from the world.
That explains why people who don’t worry about what they’re going to get are the ones who always seem to get the good stuff. And those who come to get something wonder why they can’t obtain it. They wonder why life always feels so unfair.
The hands-off manager models, inspires and nurtures this giving approach. He or she mentors contribution. When you take your hands off people’s lives and let them give what they’ve got, you’ll be allowing them to succeed. They will look to see what’s inside them and they will look to see how they can give that to the world.
I like the idea of Giving creating Success. Most sensible humans will be glad to help you out when asked. Would you open your purse when an appeal is made to you for a noble cause? I certainly will. Steve Chandler & Duane Black in ‘The Hands-off Manager‘ drive this idea. “We can allow the results to emerge in the world outside of us if we take care of this world inside. And there’s so much less stressâ€
Creating Results: The Benefits of Hands-Off Management
Duane Black has seen company after company in the home-building business focus only on their percentage of profit in every final sale. That’s what they think about all day long because that’s what they think they’re in business for and how they’ll be successful.
Every one of them had their profit margins decline over the years, because all they focused on was the end result. So they found themselves in an ever more competitive environment delivering an average level of product, an average level of customer service and an average level of community and environmental involvement. But customers don’t want to pay a premium for “average.” Customers don’t get excited about “average.”
So these companies ended up not making big margins. Soon they had to do bigger volume to try to offset their mediocre product. And their volume negatively affected their quality, so the spiral went downward and it wasn’t long before they were in real trouble. That’s the tragedy of the outside focus.
Duane’s many years in the highly successful SunCor Development Company have been characterized by the company’s inside focus. SunCor decided long ago not to obsess on volume of sales. They trust that volume will occur naturally; they let volume show up when volume is appropriate.
They’re more focused each day on perfecting the inner system that will create great communities and phenomenal land planning. For example, they insist on always having really good architecture, they don’t build unless they have great locations and they always have a staff of people who love what they do and are aligned with it and therefore are naturally, effortlessly committed to doing a great job.
Duane doesn’t want his people to have an attachment to results so that not getting them will make them feel discouraged. Instead, he trusts the universe to reward the inside game. It’s a process of being who you want to be right now, instead of straining to reach a future goal.
The absence of stressful external goals and never focusing on how many houses they were going to sell to accomplish this level of success – they had the ingredients of success built in. It was an inner process they committed to, followed through on and delivered.
SunCor’s enduring desire was to build a quality product and to provide good customer service. The other goals – the goals of result, the goals of success – weren’t needed. Things occur naturally from the inner desire of who we were going to be.
We can allow the results to emerge in the world outside of us if we take care of this world inside. And there’s so much less stress. You never need be disappointed when you have a “down month” in results. Down months happen. There’s nothing wrong with them. But if your quality of work keeps evolving upward, better and better results over the long run will show up.