Look Up

Remember when you first learned to ride a bike? Maybe that’s going back too far for some. Let me ask this: do you remember teaching your kids to ride a bike? If your experience was anything like mine, you may have noticed that the breakthrough came when the kids began to look up, at the road ahead of them, rather than focus on the wobbly front wheel or the oscillating handle bars.

When we look up, our balance automatically kicks in, and we begin to ride straight ahead.

Not only is this good advice to gain balance, but it also is great if you want to avoid obstacles. Like trees. Or cars. Take it from me.

When I learned how to ski, it was the same thing. Don’t focus on your skis. Look up. Pick a spot you want to ski to. As you get there, pick another spot down the mountain. And so on.

We are wired to unconsciously steer to what we’re looking at.

What are you looking at these days?

What are you focused on?

A touch of the flu kept me in bed a couple of days last week. I couldn’t help but turn on the tube to check out the state of our world. According to NBC Nightly News, it sucks. I grew noticeably more depressed the more I watched. So I switched it off.

Now, I’m as big a fan of reality as the next guy, but I know myself well enough to know that NBC’s version of it is not where I want to steer.

It’s a first-class car wreck. No sense making it a bigger pile-up.

I’m looking past the mess to what’s coming next. And I can guarantee that after the mess comes the clean up, and recovery.

Trouble is, if your focus is on the wreck, you’ll steer towards it. This is true EVEN IF YOU’RE TRYING TO AVOID IT. If you’re in the pile-up, you’ll have to wait for the wrecking crew to pull you out. Those who wait rarely are in position to grab the opportunities down the road, around the next bend.

Is your senior team looking up? Or trying to avoid the wreck? Watch out. Everyone in your organization below you is going to turn their gaze on what YOU are looking at. Your team will focus on what you’re fixated on. Their teams will follow suit. Your whole organization wants to see what you see.

What do you see?

Look up. Look at where you want to be.

Look around. Is there an opportunity to help your customers avoid the wreck? Can you help them steer past it to the open road ahead?

Are you talking to them about that now?

Have you challenged all your people, your suppliers and other partners to forget looking at the wreck and help you define what the road ahead looks like, and what you can be doing right now, together, to burn rubber when the timing’s right?

We all steer to what we’re looking at.

How’s your view?