Sgt. Pepper’s and You: Evolving Your Songs (Part II)
Forty years ago, on June 2, 1967, the Beatles released their breakthrough
album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. It rocked the music world,
shooting immediately to number one on the record charts and winning four
Grammy awards. Although there is much debate about whether it is the
Beatles’ best overall recording (some would opt for Revolver or Abbey Road,
for example), it has stood the test of time: After all these years, Sgt.
Pepper’s is still usually ranked in music polls as the best pop album of all
time.
Sgt. Pepper’s represented yet another major evolution in the Beatles’ music,
and its innovations are almost too numerous to list here. What’s the point?
Think about how much the Beatles’ music had evolved from just a few years
earlier when they were churning out catchy but simply-constructed rock ‘n’
roll hits such as I Want to Hold Your Hand. Like the Beatles, you have to
evolve your songs with your clients. You can’t go on singing I Want to Hold
Your Hand for the next 10 years and expect to grow your business. You have
to develop new ideas, new perspectives, and new approaches that you bring to
your clients on a regular basis. How do you do this? You push yourself to
grow and evolve as a person and as a professional.
Last month, we looked at 8 strategies to help you engage in personal renewal
and sustain your thought leadership with clients. These were:
1. Push yourself out of your comfort zone at work and in play
2. Pick a new topic each year and develop expertise in it
3. Write
4. Teach
5. Cultivate the student mindset.
6. Focus on sustaining your energy
7. Be an explorer
8. Hone your powers of observation
Here are the next 10:
9. Consciously learn from your colleagues. One of my clients, a senior
partner in a leading consulting firm, told me, "I do a lot of my learning
from my partners. It’s a very talented and diverse group, and you can learn
an enormous amount from them if you open your mind up." Adopting a "student"
mindset-rather than the expert mindset where you are supposed to have all
the answers-allows you to do this. If you think about it, much of our
learning comes from the people around us, but it tends to be haphazard. In
whatever organization you work in, you are bound to have interesting
colleagues who bring completely different skills and experiences to the
table. Actively seek them out and learn from them.
10. Play. Studies have shown that many highly creative learners have a
childlike perspective when it comes to ideas. They "toy" with new ideas,
without fear of criticism or disapproval, rearranging them and looking at
them from many different perspectives. Like children, they frequently ask
"why?" Einstein saw playfulness as "the essential feature in productive
thought." Newton wrote, "I do not know what I may appear to be to the world;
but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore,
and diverting myself in now and then finding . . . a smoother pebble or a
prettier shell than ordinary whilst the great ocean of truth lay all
undiscovered before me." Interestingly, contemporary research on play has
produced evidence that adults who engage in play have superior cognitive
abilities. We don’t know if one leads to the other, but there appears to be
a correlation.
11. Create daily routines. Although equally successful professionals may
follow different strategies for personal renewal, they all tend to make
regular investments in personal growth. Staying sharp is not an annual event
or one-off activity-rather, it’s an ongoing process. Sure, you may write
that book someday, but in the meantime do small things like keeping a daily
blog, writing a new article every few months, or reading a book about a
subject you’d like to develop expertise in. Each week, pick a few personal
development activities or routines that you can commit to.
12. Start reading again. Once we get out of college or graduate school, the
amount of reading we do takes a dramatic dive, and you have to consciously
counter this trend. Some of my clients read fiction, including the classics.
Others swear by a few, key publications like The Economist. A recent article
in the New York Times focused on "CEO libraries" and the reading habits of
CEOs. According to the Times, top executives are very eclectic in their
tastes-as you should be also. They read fiction as well as books on all
sorts of odd subjects. Many claim that they don’t actually read very many
business books (a problem for authors like me!) Believe me, if you read just
5-10 books a year, this will put you way above what the average professional
does.
13. Take a deep dive. As you become more senior, you
spend-appropriately-more and more of your time focused on the big picture
and on building and managing relationships with senior executives. But
insights and ideas don’t just come from only taking a 100,000 foot (or
30,769 meters!) view of the client’s situation. Sometimes, it’s critically
important to take a "deep dive" into an assignment your team is working on.
Nancy Peretsman, who is a top investment banker with Allen & Company, has
been described by Fortune magazine as a "confidant to over 20 ‘moguls’ in
American industry." She strongly believes she should never stray far from
hands-on client work. She says, "Investment banking has gotten very
functionalized at big firms-you might see only a narrow slice of the deal. I
like to stay involved in all aspects of a transaction, from start to finish.
For example, some years ago I advised on the merger of CDnow and N2K, two
Internet-based CD companies. For that size transaction, most senior bankers
would delegate the work to a junior team. I felt there was something
important to learn, however, so I dug in myself-it took months of my time.
Yet, based on what I learned during that period, I came up with the idea of
linking the new company with yet a third, Columbia House (a deal later
successfully completed). Without having gotten my hands dirty, I would never
have had the insight, confidence, or credibility to approach Time-Warner
about Columbia House."1
14. Add "outliers" to your network. Over time, we tend to draw on the same,
small group of people in our network. There are several studies, however,
which show that there is great value in reaching outside your traditional
set of relationships and connecting with so-called "weak links." These
individuals may offer several benefits. First, they can connect you to other
networks which you might not normally have access to. Second, compared to
your closest associates, they may have a more unbiased view of the problem
you’re grappling with and therefore be in a position to offer fresh advice.
15. Expand your expertise into adjacent areas. This process can represent a
natural extension of your knowledge base. The best industry experts, for
example, develop knowledge and insights across the entire value chain for
their industry, from suppliers through to end-users. Are you an expert in
the automotive industry? Then you should probably understand the dynamics of
energy prices and the latest developments in consumer electronics. Are you a
student of the innovation process? Then you may want to read biographies of
highly creative individuals in fields outside of business (Howard Gardner’s
book, "Extraordinary Minds," is a fascinating study of genius, profiling
Mozart, Virginia Woolf, Gandhi, and Freud).
16. "Minor" in a process or function. There are certain functions or
processes that are important to a wide range of clients regardless of what
industry they are in. In consulting these might include innovation and
change management; in banking the organization of the finance function or
capital markets theory; in law, the mediation and arbitration process; and
so on. If your primary focus is a geography or industry, for example, having
a secondary focus on one of these universal themes can be extremely
beneficial to clients and provide a great focus for your learning efforts.
17. Take time for reflection. Some researchers in the field of creativity
believe that our best insights develop during the moment of reflection and
relaxation that often occurs after a period of intense activity. In fact,
many of the great thinkers in history-from Sir Isaac Newton to Albert
Einstein-made it a conscious habit to get away from the hub-hub of their
daily life and create time for solitary reflection. Today, given the demands
on our time, it seems almost inconceivable to take an hour just to think.
Yet, this is exactly what we need to do. Everyone has to find their
particular time for this-for some, it’s an hour in the early morning before
everyone arrives at the office; for others, an extra-long shower or soak in
the hot tub. Bill Gates, the chairman of Microsoft, famously goes away for
a week each year to a small cabin just to read, think, and strategize.
18. Get a mentor or coach. To grow and develop, we all need a bit of raw,
unvarnished feedback about our strengths and weaknesses. A good mentor or
coach can provide this, assuming you create the kind of open relationship
where that individual feels comfortable being totally candid with you.
Colleagues, family, and friends can also provide this perspective. Actively
seek out feedback about both your professional and personal development
needs. You might ask a more senior or experienced colleague-someone you
trust and are comfortable talking to, "Given where I’ve come from, and what
you know about me, can you give me some thoughts on things I ought to focus
on in the next 2-3 years?" You could ask a family member, "Do you have any
suggestions for how I could become a better listener?" And so on.
Complacency is the enemy of the successful professional. You have some good
clients and make a good income-why change? But this is exactly the time to
push yourself to develop and grow. The Beatles’ producer, George Martin,
said this about Fab Four’s recording sessions: "They were always pushing,
always aiming for a better or new sound. ‘Can we have a different chord
here, use a new instrument there, can you change our voices? At times they
just exhausted me, frankly."
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Andrew Sobel is a leading authority on client relationships and the skills
and strategies required to earn enduring client loyalty. He is a consultant
and educator to major services firms worldwide. Andrew is the author of the
business bestsellers Clients for Life (Simon & Schuster) and Making Rain (John Wiley & Sons). He can be
reached at andrew@andrewsobel.com (Tel: 505.982.0211).
Copyright by Andrew Sobel. This newsletter is available for reprint but only with the permission of the author.