The One Thing You Need to Know

Mostly took the weekend off work (except for a bit of email and my usual reading)

Instead of workout Saturday, I split, hauled and stacked a full cord of wood for 3 hours. (I also cycled to market and back but that is another story). Thanks to my friends Trevor (who also donated the tree that got felled by the storm last week), Randy (who owns every power toy imaginable including a splitter) and Steve (AKA chainsaw). Mostly I just filled the wheelbarrow with wood and moved it a few hundred yards. I enjoyed the camaraderie and the physical labour. Sore now and hayfever is bad.

I have been thinking a lot about leadership. What people need is a definite direction and vision. The odd part of my current role is I need to get buy in from California of this direction and vision before I can impart it.

One of the books I read this weekend is “The One Thing You Need to Know… About Great managing, Great Leading and Sustained Individual Success”. It talks about using people in the areas they are most strong in – a concept I am a big advocate of. It also talks about true depth. So often I worry about shallow fixes for deeper problems. I know there is great power in simplifying things. Sometimes we simplify too much and work only on the superficial without fixing the root problems.

Part of running a great business is full utilization of resources and being lean. Sometimes we cut too deep in order to try to achieve this goal. Cutting things too lean does not allow us to do a few of the “new” things required to move us forward. We are on the border of too lean right now.

I often say “Fail often, Fail fast, Fail cheap”. We need to try a few new things in order to have a secure future. To try new things needs a bit of excess resource.