The Last Word on Power
Thoughts on Reinvention
This week I read a book called “The last Word on Power – Executive Re-Invention for leaders who must make the impossible happen” by Tracy Goss. This book was written in the mid-1990’s when corporate ‘transformation’ and ‘re-engineering’ were all the rage. The work does have overtones of those 90’s themes but also has some useful, and dare I say, ‘prescient’, ideas.
The book still is a product of its time though with a lot of wasted words and repetition and lifeless prose intended to fit it into the box of a 200 page business book, which was the box of the time. Included is a super-unfortunate photo of the author in full-on ‘Murder she Wrote’ styling on the dust jacket. It is interestingly ironic 20 years later to see how a book about breaking out of paradigms (another big 90’s word) was so successfully shoved into the publisher’s ‘business book’ box.
But the ideas are solid, and if you allow them, maybe even life changing.
The first idea I’ll inadequately summarize as ‘you have to unpack before you repack’. The idea here is that if your goal is to reinvent yourself then you can’t start where you are. You have to go back and understand how you got to where you are and why. You have to go through a phase of self-analysis and self-awareness before you can begin the process of reinvention.
The author calls this process discovering your ‘winning strategy’. Your winning strategy is how you got to where you are. It is that default approach to getting things done and getting ahead that has always worked for you. For example we all know professionals whose winning strategy is to outwork everyone else. For each new challenge they put their head down and bash away at it until it is conquered or they break.
If you dig behind that winning strategy you’ll find a reason. I do it this way ‘so as to’. For example I attack all challenges with hard work so as to prove that I am worthy. Eventually you will tease out the ‘rules’ that you are using to measure success or failure for yourself and your life. Your winning strategy helps you determine if you are ‘winning’ at life.
The second thing is to recognize that we are all working within some basic societal, personal and business frameworks that she call the ‘Basic Human Paradigm’. The point is to recognize that whether you know it or not you are operating inside a box of rules and expectations, some of which are your own some of which are inherited from your environment.
You are stuck in a rut. Unless you go back and understand the rut that you are stuck in and dig it up you are destined to stay in that rut, going around in circles working ever harder with your winning strategy trying to win a game that is unwinnable.
What is ‘possible’ is defined by and constrained by your winning strategy and your existing frame. Your winning strategy plays by a set of assumed rules and is ‘inside the box’. Your winning strategy is essentially an effort to compensate for what is not possible. It makes the impossible, well, impossible (if that makes any sense).
Once we have internalized the patterns of the past we can start reinventing a future. The next concept, which is quite similar to Buddhist teaching, is that you cannot control the outcome. What is going to happen is going to happen. You need to become comfortable with hopelessness. You have to become ok with the fact that nothing you do really matters. All the rules are made up, nobody really wins and we all end up the same place.
This process of giving up hope allows you the ultimate freedom. Once you have disconnected from outcomes you are free to focus on whatever you do with an unmetered passion and execute towards it without fear and without the constraints of the box.
Accept hopelessness as a gift. Understand that all is out of your control. Accept this and follow your passions anyhow. Now you are starting to move in the direction of the “impossible”. Yes this means freely putting at risk all of that stuff in your life you are working so hard to hang on to. That’s the hard part to put down.
After you have successfully put down your old strategies and your old paradigms. After you have given up hope and become comfortable with letting go of what you have. Then you can move towards reinventing an impossible future.
How do you move forward once you have this self-awareness and peace of mind?
The powerful first step in the reinvention process is to ‘declare’. You stand up and declare the impossible. You declare a new state. Declarations enable reinvention. “We will put a man on the moon by the end of the decade!” Now you’re way outside the box and on your way to reinvention. You will have to create and learn and execute in all new ways. You’ll have to invent a new frame to make this declaration a reality.
One of the interesting aspects is in the way declarations are worded. I love the power of declaring “We are the future of…” Think about what that says. You are inventing an entirely new future. When you do this as a leader you create what is called ‘a clearing’. You create a space where the new invented future exists and that draws other people into that clearing accelerating the reinvention. It’s the safe place of the new frame.
Another key message in the work was to stop trying to interpret everything. What happened is what happened. You can’t really control what happened so stop wasting so much time and effort on interpreting what happened. Instead move towards the next iteration. Move from ‘What happened?’ to ‘What is missing?’ to ‘What’s next?’ to keep the positive momentum of reinvention.
As part of this if you work in organizations or with people you will be forced to make requests. When you make these requests be careful how you word them so that your intent is quite clear. Even if your requests get denied or rejected, if they are well worded and have good intent they will make an impact. You can learn from the impact, recalibrate and move again in an adjusted direction.
If you feel stuck. If you have a little voice telling you that you are playing a small game and there must be something else. If you want to reinvent your future. Give this book a read through and internalize some of the concepts.
To summarize the message: if you are serious about reinventing yourself;
- Do the self-analysis to determine your winning strategy, why it has made you successful and how it is holding you back.
- Understand the paradigm or frame that you are operating within. See that box and how it is constraining what is possible.
- Let go of the outcome. Embrace hopelessness as a gift. Pursue your passions anyhow.
- Declare a new state of the future around where your organization, company or personal passion leads you. Create and be a clearing for that new future that draws in others.
- Don’t try to interpret the results and keep pushing towards ‘What happens next?’
- Make requests that are well worded and have good intent (i.e. ask good questions) and learn from the impact that these requests have to recalibrate your reinvention trajectory.
- Most successful people who you think are ‘gifted’ are actually ‘practiced’. Practicing your reinvention process continuously will create that future.
This is a methodology to shift from trying to predict the future or trying to control the future to declaring the future and causing it to come into being.