Hubris and ‘Good’ versus ‘Great’

Hubris and ‘Good’ versus ‘Great’

And realizing you’re not the smartest person in the room so you should remember to listen.

I had the great pleasure of watching a keynote address last week by Jim Collins who is well known for his books, including the seminal “Good to Great” which is a staple of business reading.  He comes from the genre of Peter Drucker and Tom Peters who mix a bit of wisdom and data into their inspirational message for business leaders.

I very much enjoyed watching him speak.  He was flawless in his pacing and tone and hand gestures and using silence like a hammer – just a wonderful speaker with solid content  and he connected so well with the audience.  You don’t get to that point of mastery by chance.  He has really worked on his craft.

He is a wonderful speaker with so many great nuggets and valuable messages about leadership.  I could tell by watching him that he has worked for years to master his craft.  The emotive spinning a tuning of phrases.  The energetic hand movements like he was a grabbing thoughts from the air and mashing them into themes and thoughts. The dramatic pauses to let the silence drip like honey slowly into the minds of the audience.  The intense facial expressions, like exclamation points on his sentences.

He was a master at his craft.  I could only think of the many long hours and years he has been working on this message and presentations to achieve such a passionate zenith where message and content are exultant in delivery.

We were enraptured and enthralled.  We were eating it up. We were leaning forward in our chairs, nodding our heads and grinning like children.

I was taking furious notes on my laptop; even though I’m sure the presentation is available, I wanted the visceral connection between his words and my conscious brain that only writing them down can translate.  My own carving of mental stellae, hoping that the granite of my mind might preserve some of this.

At the end of his speech, instead of just asking the audience of a few hundred for questions, Jim asked us to turn to our neighbors and form small groups.  This we did willingly as we were under his spell.  And he asked us to, as a group come up with a good question, and send a representative to one of the microphone stands to ask that question.

Being who I am, and being full of myself I was the first to speak up.  I thought if our little pod needed leadership I would offer mine because how could these industry people be expected to come up with anything interesting?   Whereas I, with my vast experience and utter hubris could easily frame an excellent metaphysical interview question.

So I spoke up, “In these sorts of situations I usually will ask one of two things.  First I might ask the open ended question “so what have you learned from all this?” or I might filter a bit as “What’s the one most important thing?” or “What are the top three things?”  And then I paused for them to acquiesce to my brilliance.

The next person, a British guy from a health sciences company, sitting in the row behind us offered a specific content question. The Lady next to him, a food industry executive, also offered a good alternative.

But it was the guy next to me, another Brit from a different life sciences company, who had the brilliant question.

At one point in his speech Jim came the closest to talking about himself.  He spoke of how he now believes that the most productive or valuable time in a person’s life is after 50. (Jim was now in his 50’s)  Because in our modern world, this is where you have developed the skills, you have the experience AND you are free of the constraints and worries of youth.

Jim had said this almost wistfully as he had just finished the fourth and final book in the Good to Great series and he would be moving on to some new project.

Collin, the Brit next to me suggested that we turn this observation and question around on Jim and ask him, if he really thought the ‘life begins at 50’ what was he going to do now, personally to take advantage of this opportunity?

There were other suggestions but this one thoughtful question resonated and we elected Collin to stand at the microphone and ask it.

To set the scene – It was your typical giant hotel ballroom with a few hundred, maybe even a thousand in the audience and Jim up on stage.  The rows of chairs were set in ranked squares separated by aisles like at any event. They set up three microphones in the three aisles and when Jim called for the questions the groups ejected their question missionaries and lines formed behind each.

Collin was first in line behind the third microphone, on the right side.

Jim started left to right.  The first question came and it was a topical question on how to select key team members for ‘the important seats on your bus’.  Jim obviously ready for this, masterfully enumerated the 5 key attributes that the key people on your team should have.  (He had heard this question before).

The second question was something similar and Jim fielded it with aplomb.

Then it was Collin’s turn.  Collin asked Jim the question about being over 50 and what HE, Jim was going to do with this valuable part of his life.

And I watched as Jim was forced to think on his feet and work through the very personal process of “What are you going to do with your life now?”   He stumbled a bit as he searched for the right words and thoughts and he was broken out of his performer’s schtick.  It was like he had taken a torpedo from left field.

But he did that thing that we all should do in this situation, which is to be human.  He admitted that he didn’t know, and was still working through it in his mind, but he found his footing and talked with renewed  energy about the possibilities and the potential things that aligned with his passion that might be in his future.

There are lessons I took from this.  First, my assumption that I was the smartest person in the room by default was ridiculous.  We do ourselves and our communities and our stakeholders a great disservice when we forget about the potential, and evident  brilliance of the other people in the room.  Interestingly, this same hubris, when displayed as part of a company’s culture, in Jim’s science,  is one of the indicators that a company is about to fail.

So – yeah – Pride cometh before the fall.

When I subsequently looked this gentleman up on LinkedIn I found that he was a executive VP of an entire region for this company and a Harvard grad to boot.  I’m pretty sure if he and I were the only two people in a room I would not be the smartest person there.

It’s not that I wasn’t willing to hear or to listen, it’s that I just assumed no one would have anything important to say or that they would be afraid to say it.  I have to keep coming back to my personal mantra that “It’s not about me” and it’s not about you.  When you think only in terms of, in context of, yourself and your frame you are limiting the scope of opportunity for brilliance in your life.

You have to live outside in, not inside out.  But in order to do so you have to become comfortable and competent with what is on the inside of you.  That is your  inner game.  It is that inner game which, when you master it will allow you to either act with destructive hubris or open up to the possibilities of those in the world around you, without fear.

Lesson – assume you are the dumbest person in the room.  Ask questions.  Learn from and profit from the experience and brilliance of those around you.  I doesn’t diminish you in any way.  It makes you fuller and stronger.  Whereas assumptive hubris will always diminish you.

Jim has so many powerful nuggets and the stories and data to back them up.  I could write 200 blog posts about his ideas.  One in particular that he uses often is that “Good is the enemy of Great”.

He uses this in the context of companies.  When things are going well, when things are good, they are satisfied and lose focus and they don’t get to, or even pursue their greatness.

This is a message that is scalable to people.  How many people do you know that are satisfied with ‘good  and won’t try for ‘great’ because they don’t want to risk the good.  Many times the good is not even that good and the good has its own risk – even though they see it as a safe path.

I struggle with this myself.  I’m a risk taker but I have responsibilities, to my community and my family.  I can’t rush of like Don Quixote tilting at windmills and risk the merits and fruits of a long career, can I?  Or am I doing them a disservice by not flying higher?  Is it really just an excuse.  Am I hiding in a box and trying to justify it?

More than once over the last few years I’ve had people come to me with the same question and I invariably tell them to make the leap.

It is another form of the innovator’s dilemma, where you have to destroy your current reality to create the next big thing with no guarantee of success.

But, according to Jim there is a middle ground.  Companies that do this well have a way of testing the risk and then leaping.  You take smaller changes or risks or adventures – a pilot program in that direction – and once you have determined the opportunity is there, then you take the big leap.

It seems like a tricky concept to me.  There is always a blind leap of faith involved when you strive to be great.  Maybe the fact that there is risk and you are venturing into the unknown is what draws us.

I’ll leave you with this thorny question; “Are you sacrificing Great for Good?”