If you consider yourself as an emerging leader and are serious about your learning and development, you’ll find nuggets of wisdom from Jim Collins.
- Build a Personal Board of Directors –those are selected not for their accomplishments but for their character.
(learn from great leaders and be inspired) - Turn Off Your Electronic Gadget – effective people take time to THINK. Begin the discipline by putting white space in your calender. Engage in the glorious pocket of quietude.
(spend time to think and reflect) - Work on Your Three Intersecting Circles – what Collins calls the “Hedgehog Concept”: (1) what you can be passionate about; (2) what you can be the best in the world at; (3) what drives your economic or resource engine.
(disassociated view of yourself, talents and passions and get inputs from those who love you) - What is your questions-to-statements ratio and can you double it? Ask more questions and make fewer statements when you communicate or give feedback.
(from being interesting to becoming interested) - Start a “stop-doing” list, beyond the normal to-do list. Collins frames it like this: If you wake up tomorrow morning and discover you inherited $20 million and you have a terminal disease with 10 years to live, what would be on your stop-doing list?
(The real task is to be clear what not to do) - Unplug the opportunities that distract you. Just because it is a once-in-a- lifetime opportunity doesn’t mean it is right for you. There will be always be a once-in-a- lifetime opportunity.
(a fact but not a reason, if it does not fit your 3 circles, there are many such opportunities) - Find something which you are passionate about, and you are willing to endure the pain. (takes deliberate practice and effort)
- Articulate the values which you will not compromise.
(our guiding constellation, starts not first with our strategies but with our values)