Cycling, even driving, the French Alps is stunningly beautiful and difficult all at the same time. It is physically demanding, mentally taxing, and requires your full attention. Something you might not know, unless you’ve been there, is these mountain roads are quite a contrast to the mountain roads throughout America. Two things are missing, in fact.
Guardrails and Signs.
In America, we have guardrails all across the Rockies, throughout the Smokies, up and down the Carolinas, from Reno to Tahoe, and even in the Ozarks. We love guardrails. We feel safer just knowing that they’re there. We love warning signs too. Those same mountain roads are littered with sign after sign telling the driver that there is a dangerous curve up ahead. We’ve even gone so far as to tell the driver what speed to maintain. We care deeply about the safety of our American team and want to ensure that they have all the information they need to navigate their way across our land. We leave nothing to chance…
The French, not so much. All across the Pyrennes and throughout the Alps, the guardrails are mostly missing. Mile after mile it’s just you, the narrow pavement, and the rugged, rocky, steep drop straight to certain death. The signs?
Missing in action.
You are alone to your own devices. On your own. The roads are narrower, steeper, and you’re inches away from certain death for mile after mile after mile.
Here’s something funny. Do NOT miss. This, if you think about it, can be HUGE for you and your team. Here it is.
The French roads are actually safer. They have far fewer crashes and fewer fatalities too. By now, assuming that you are thinking, you know the reason why. Funny, huh.
Guardrails and warning signs do not make us safer. Actually, they make it easier for us to fall asleep, to become overly dependent on their data, less likely to pay attention, and more prone to error. Why?
The lack of both causes all our senses to engage and puts our system on full alert. We tune into our surroundings, turn off the ipod, don’t even think about texting, and wouldn’t dare take our eyes off the road ahead. Full attention and full engagement fuels the Frenchie forward as the road narrows and twists and turn with little to no warning. The Rockies driver, not so much. He’s looking to the left at the guardrail and to the right for the warning sign. He is not fully engaged and engulfed in his surroundings. He’s looking side to side for data to tell him what to do. One sign blows down, one sign doesn’t catch his eye, and the next turn may just be his last.
As I travel from client to client, I’m reminded of this truth. We have way too many teams, far too many leaders, and countless individuals that are far too passive. They are NOT thinking. They think that they are.
Therein lies the danger.
And yet every day in a million little ways they look side to side and they look up hoping to find the answer. And then they wait. In fact, they mostly wait. They want the answer. The simple mistake is that they want someone to give it to them. Someone to tell them which way to go and how to go there. They don’t want to THINK.
Wake up.
Wake up dead man.
Wake up and think about the road you are on. Are you on the road that you have decided? Is this road headed in the direction of your big dreams? Are you ripping up the twists and turns fully alert, alive, and engaged in your OPUS? Are you trusting your senses or still looking side to side for one more piece of analytics to give you the answer?
Are you thinking?
Are you creating an environment that encourages your team to think?
Are you creating an environment that encourages your team to convert their thinking into new productive action?
Are you leading by your example, by your moral authority, by your willingness to take down the guardrails and trust them to keep it on road?
The road ahead is full of ambiguity and anything but safe. Countless teams are in a fight for their life. Many have died already. The road ahead offers twists, turns, no guardrails, signs that are outdated and obsolete, sharp cliffs on both sides of the equation, and demands our full attention, 100% of our energy, full engagement, and a passion to master our craft. Repeating the old model, putting it on cruise control, or going in reverse will simply lengthen the slow death. Think about it…
Those that survive and thrive will share this attribute. They will think more and they will have more depth to their thinking. Their leaders will build a team that thinks. Their leaders will build a team with great diversity of thinking. These leaders will turn more and more of this thinking into experiments. Some of these experiments will morph into real, productive action. Productive action that navigates the road less traveled. These teams we’ll read about in 2020.
Will yours be here?
Tell me more, my friend.
Tell me more…
BUILT TO LEAD 