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Adam Kirk Smith

- A. Smith Blog - Leadership in Life

Glenn Brooke

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No Instant Mastery

This infamous cartoon comes to mind when I hear people casually dismiss as “easy” what I know to require hard work, difficult learning, and diligent practice: 

HOW TO DRAW AN OWL

There’s the start, and then the finish. Voila! Instant masterpiece drawing. 

One of the reasons Star Wars fans were turned off by The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi movies was the violation of the central premise that becoming a Jedi Master with advanced skills required years of study and practice. In the original movies Luke had to work hard to use the Force to wield a lightsaber and lift even a pebble. After training intensely with Yoda for a time he’s told that he’s still not ready to face Darth Vader. In The Force Awakens we see Rey, a young woman without any training or prior experience, fly the Millenium Falcon in an elaborate dogfight with Tie fighters, wield a lightsaber successfully against an opponent who had trained all his life, manipulate guards into doing things against their orders, and lift a whole field of boulders.  Zippity-do-da, hocus pocus, instant Jedi Master.

A genuine apprenticeship is composed of (1) instruction, (2) practice with feedback, and (3) association with others practicing the craft. You need instruction because you don’t know something yet. You need practice because skills aren’t perfected by a single repetition. You need association with others because there are aspects of a craft which are more caught than taught. 

None of this is instant, even if The Force were to exist in our universe. It’s demonstrably true that you will improve more rapidly with focused practice on specific skills. But no mastery comes without instruction, practice, and association with others also practicing the craft.  

There are two reasons I believe leaders need to pay attention here.

First, every worthwhile endeavor requires significant craft expertise, which is only obtained through disciplined effort over time. Leadership – including your leadership – is a long apprenticeship in the same direction. Perseverance is both required. You are likely to hear little voices in your collection of head-trash which suggest you should quit, or if you were really a leader, this would be easier. Ignore them, or better yet, laugh at them.  

Second, mastery is honorable because it is the culmination of sustained effort. Each person you work with has some level of mastery, so honor it. Your organization requires many crafts coming together. Commend skill and craftsmanship of others. You’ll find that your organization will get more of what leaders commend and recognize.  

Keep working on your leadership craft!  

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Thinking Who, Rather than How

Leaders have 3 primary responsibilities:

  • Thinking
  • Deciding
  • Communicating

Typically, early career assignments are completed by you executing work, or working with a small team to execute work. You naturally spend considerable time focused on How that work gets done.

The more senior you become in an organization, you must shift gears and think less about the specifics of How something is accomplished, and think more about Who should do that work:

Thinking Who, Rather than How

There is a practical limit for how much you can accomplish as an individual; there is no limit on what you can accomplish with others and through others, building on what others have created in generations before you. 

Make it your ambition to follow this pattern:

  1. Think hard.  
  2. Decide what is needed, and what you want the future to look like.  
  3. Decide on the Who will take that forward.  
  4. Assign/delegate the How to that person.

(Note: Communication remains critically important, but the content and scope of communication will be different.)

You’ll increase your leadership capability when you invest time up and out of the How, providing oversight and guidance to the Who.

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It’s an Elephant, What Next?

Have you ever left a conversation confident you agreed on the problem and what to do next, only to discover later that he had a completely different idea? Yeah, me too. Often.   

I dislike the oft-told Hindu story of the blind men describing the elephant, each feeling only one part. In truth, I like the story, but I dislike where people usually leave the story. Everyone gets the big Aha that the blind men independently have only part of the story. But what next?  

Elephants are a successful species; they were not designed by a bureaucratic committee. Your organization probably looks like an elephant. There are multiple parts with radically different functions, even in “one” body. People closely associated with one part may not know much about other parts.  

What could the blind men have done next? What should leaders in your elephantine organization do next? The two keys are (1) build a collective understanding, and (2) dialogue about the future. Said another way, what’s the current reality, and where should we go from here?

Practical tips for building a collective understanding

  1. Listen as though you will be quizzed on the content. This requires disciplined attention. 
  2. Draw it. I had a virology professor in grad school who insisted we sketch out your understanding. “If you can draw it, I know if you understand it,” he said. As much as I love words, even simple doodles and diagrams can be more powerful – and much less likely to be misunderstood.
  3. Test it. Ask people to summarize or restate what you have shared. Let them check your summary or restatement of what they shared. Better to be a little embarrassed early than execute a career-ending flub later because someone misunderstood.  

Now you have a better, fuller picture of the elephant.  

Practical tips for dialogue about the future 

Dialogue means mutually sharing perceptions and ideas. Dialogue is not an “I-dictate-you-do-it-now-please” statement. Dialogue requires you start with the idea that the other person knows something you don’t.  

  1. Draw people out with questions which build on what they already shared. Ask for the Why behind the idea. “Can you say more about this?” “What comes next?” “What are the implications of _______?”  
  2. Use tools like SWOT (strength weakness opportunity threat) and failure scenarios to explore potential solutions. The collective work of critically examination helps everyone develop a shared understanding.  
  3. Create a short explanation and a longer explanation. The work of crafting two different versions inevitably helps cement ideas, and gives more modes for critique.  

Leaders who are skilled in building collective understanding and facilitating dialogue about the future are organizational treasures.