“As you grow older, you will discover that you have two hands, one for helping yourself, the other for helping others.” - Maya Angelou, Civil Rights Activist
We're lucky enough to have a boat which we keep in Southern Ireland and in the summer love to spend time with our children and grandson messing about on the water. With children around, we're super concerned for safety, and the mantra we find ourselves saying over again is "keep one hand on the boat for you" - often shouted as the kids scuttle around the boat having fun.
It struck me this is a good metaphor for how we need to hang on to our own self care as leaders. It's too easy to get swept away with the stress of everyday and lose a grip on your own sense of well being. Great leaders always keep 'one hand on the boat' for themselves, so they are safe and stable and have the other hand free to support others.
In my last corporate role I often got trapped in a cycle of back to back meetings each day, and found myself having to catch up with my ‘real work’ at the end of what had already been a very long and exhausting day. I would often still at the office at 7.30 or 8pm struggling with a never ending 'To Do' list. I realised this led to a series of bad outcomes for me every day it happened.
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Who doesn't like Netflix? But for those of us who really love audio, podcasts are a great way to transform what might have been dead, downtime into an opportunity to explore, learn and be inspired.
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Having a strong strategic vision for the future is commonly acknowledged as a critical Leadership tool and in a recent study by Sirius Decisions having a Strategic Vision ranked as the most important leadership characteristic. I think having a strong strategic vision is even more important when you are driving any kind of transformational change.
Throughout my career I've been involved in creating, communicating and delivering many different change programmes, and to various degrees of success! It's through this first hand experience that I know how critical it is to have a strong, enduring and sufficiently detailed, strategic vision of the future you want to create. But it's not always easy to make sure you stop at the beginning of a change programme and spend the time to create the vision when there is real urgency to deliver the change itself.
It's tempting to start by setting up change workstreams, assigning new roles, projects and tasks. These mechanics are important but we must stop and make sure we have a vision in place, before we leap to these mechanics.
But what do we mean when we talk about a strategic vision and why is it so important?
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All businesses can expect to need to change significantly every 3-5 years. With new technology, new market dynamics, new economic imperatives, new customers and a shifting global landscape there are many change forces at work for all of us.
When you are in the grip of a difficult change programme it can seem that you are the only one impacted and that no one has it as tough as you and your team.
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