Leadership Mastery - Day 2

On to Part 2 of the Leadership Mastery by the power within.

The second day was a definite eye opener for me. We started off with Ram Charan who started his speech in a much different manner than the rest of the previous speakers. Instead of being up on stage, he walked around the floor engaging people directly and involving the crowd more deeply in his words.

Practice leads to Instinct grows to Intuition which evolves into Judgement.
it's only through the practice and desired determined repetition that people are able to reach further with their skills.

The rules he set out were:
1) Deliberate Practice. (Are you practicing something new every week?)

Without learning something new at each opportunity, your obsolescence grows. You need ferocious determination to commit to new practices because if you're not growing, your competition is.

2) Look over the Horizon (what's coming in the future?)

What's changing? Develop the ability to detect change. Also cultivate your creating change abilities to influence your teams.

2a) Identify changes in the external environment

Be a creator of change instead of a recipient.

3) Broaden yourself

Each and every day you must strive to be more than the person that exists now.

4) Use the Multiplier effect

"I don't do it, I get it done, with my multiplier"

Working in methods to leverage yourself and train the trainers allows your influence to increase in exponential leaps and bounds.

5) Keep an eye for Talent

With the current shortage of talent in the world - a keen eye for people that would make a fit, or growing organically (finding talent within your organization) will keep you ahead of the competition.

6) Calibrate People

This topic was touched briefly and basically stated to ensure that people are working at a good pace to the benefit of the business in one of the categories of margin or velocity - Ram continued into the next point to deeper explain the theory.

7) Mastery of your business

Exercise: How do the successful companies accomplish measurable goals? Identify 10+ companies that make good money over a long period of time? How do they make money?

Some of the highlights from this chat were:
- Microsoft (96% gross margin on product)
- Johnson and Johnson (11% sustained growth for 50 years)

Understanding of the 4 parts in a business that make all of the difference.

• Margin
• Velocity
• Revenue Growth
• Cash

Return = Margin x Velocity

Each staff meeting to really make a difference in the business would be to list different methods on how to increase the Margin if possible, develop a more efficient/faster Velocity to increase the revenues.

Ram gave the example of how Dell with already thin margins was forced to look towards increasing the velocity of the business. He then continued to show us a chart of the inventory turnover rate of Dell over the years and then explained that Dell's current inventory turn is somewhere around 120 in comparison to their closest competitor sitting around 25.

8) Understanding of the 80/20 rule

80 percent of the benefits will come from 20 percent of the changes. Once you identify said changes, select 3-5 of them to focus on as laser sharp dominant priorities.

9) Having the right people in the right jobs
10) Follow through

Ram's speech was of excellent value to me personally during this weekend because I had a lightbulb turn on at this point for my own business - and came up with an idea to increase revenues by 10% with just a little rearrangement in business structure.

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The second speaker of the day Dan Gilbert spoke about his theories on Stumbling on Happiness

After showering us with many different views on how to calculate happines ranging from: Happiness = Your Salary / Your Neighbour's Salary to comparing one scenario vs. another. Other tidbits of info included that 10% of your income provides 90% of your happiness.

If you're intersted in checking out more of Dan Gilbert - I managed to find a video on the internet.

One of the comments that struck a chord with some of the crowd was the comparison on levels of happiness before and after children within a marriage. Basically he stated that with children and the time commitments required the different types of happiness that could be experienced were reduced, and thus wouldn't return back to normal until the kids moved out. I myself can't truly comment on this yet as I've yet to start a family. Needless to say the parents in the crowed weren't too amused.

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The next speaker up was Frank Abagnale the author and protagonist of Catch Me If You Can with an inspiring speech about his history and life. At first, it seemed less lively and took many of us off guard with the delivery, but the content grabbed our attention, and before we knew it - many of us were swept away in the rythm of his words.

Many of the people that have heard the story via the movie - myself included were in awe of the social prowess of Abagnale during his youth, however from his point of view it was simply a matter of survival as a child thrust into the world of adults. His strong stance on family values and ethics was an inspiration to us all.

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Unfortunately due to some logistics and travel issues, Peter Guber wasn't able to present.

Luckily for us however the keynote speaker Anthony Robbins was able to jump onto a helicopter and appear earlier for us.

Something of interest I noticed was that fans were put onto the stage before Tony walked on. Little did I know I'd be wishing for some fans too after all of the excitement.

Let's get down to the notes I took:

3 Mandates of Leadership

1. See it as it is, not worse than it is
2. See it better than it is
3. Make it the way you see it

The most fundamental job of a leader is to influence.

Now to set the record straight - Tony is NOT a "motivational speaker". Where people get that idea from is all of the commercials with all of the jumping and screaming - but there is a method to the madness.

Focus

v

State -> Behaviour / Action --> Results

^

Physiology

To reach the results you desire, you must change the behaviours or actions of a person. However before you can inspire change in behaviours or actions, you must alter someone's state. The only two routes to state are via physiology or where the mind is focused.

I suppose since his claim to fame wasn't hypnosis, we went the physiological route to change the state. Although it seemed silly at first, the drills on applying different types of physiology to similar actions indicated a change in state, and in the end, a change in the result of our actions.

I think that people could hear us cheering from across Whistler village as we got pumped up for the last few "state changes".

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All in all the weekend was a most enjoyable experience. The company at hand always had something interesting to speak about - the speakers were of the highest calibre - and best of all it didn't feel like I was attending an event where I was there only to realize it was a giant marketing ploy aimed at selling me the "next level seminar". It was this level of professionalism that makes me look forward to the next year's lineup - and to experience the whole thing anew. Until the next one, live well - live full and I'll hopefully see more of you around again the next time through.

Cheers,

Earl