Inner Circle

The people closest to you highly determine our level of influence and how well you realise your potential. They extend or inhibit the effectiveness of your influence on others.  Leadership is about influence and as your vision begins to take shape, you need others to help drive it to higher heights. It is inevitable that you will have to build various levels of leadership to manage your organisation’s growth. A chain is as strong as its weakest link. Those closest to you in your leadership circle will make or break you.

My friend runs a rapidly growing organisation with a diverse leadership team. I desired to know what keeps her going even (and especially) when everything seems to work against their efforts. She proudly spoke of her advisory team. It was clear that she valued their support in driving the daily activities of the organisation. This inner circle multiplied her potential and most importantly covered her in the areas of her weakness. 

Mother Teresa said, "You can do what I cannot do. I can do what you cannot do. Together we can do great things." These words summarise the strength of an inner circle as I came to learn from my friend. Her organization had successfully delivered the largest project in their history. She shared with me the importance of building a strong leadership team around you which she calls her inner circle.

The founders had set a great vision and proper structures to drive the vision. As she took over the reigns, she was confident that the structures were sufficient to take the company’s success to the next level. She developed a transformational strategy. Going by the company’s past achievements, this was an extremely ambitious plan. The strategy required an equally ambitious and tenacious team to execute successfully.

The first thing she did was to share her strategy with a group of three influential individuals in the company. She was testing the waters before taking a leap.  The team quickly bought into her ideas and started thinking of how they can execute the new strategy. They had such positivity that they grew and solidified her strategy. They came up with brilliant concepts and gave her a plan that would get the staff members’ to buy into the vision. These three formed her first inner circle members.

Your inner circle must have individuals that add and multiply your efforts. Identify and surround yourself with people that lift you up. You will come across people who make it their business to perpetually frustrate your efforts. Avoid them like plague.

The next thing was to identify leaders in the organisation with certain strengths that she did not possess. She needed legal counsel, a strong marketer, fund raisers and a strategic advisor. She knew her strength was in driving the project, but more importantly she recognised that the success of the project was dependent on partnering with others. She could not do it alone. The second thing in forming your inner circle is selecting a team that will give you leverage in areas of your weakness. Work on your strengths and partner with your weaknesses.

In order to re-organise your inner circle, you must have the courage to let go of the incumbents. The quest to realise your potential is determined by those closest to you. Beyond determining the skills you need around you, you need to assess their willingness to play the role you need them to fit into.  She had some painful experiences having to reassess each of the members in her previous inner circle. While they were crucial in the earlier stages of forming the organization, she needed a different skill set for the new dispensation.

As the project took shape, she was very intentional in the relationships she built around her. The fundraiser was a key component for the success of the project. She reached out beyond her current inner circle to draw in a competent fundraiser. If she did not know better, she would have surrounded herself with people she was comfortable with, even if they had no skills in fundraising. You have to get off your comfort zone to get the right people into your inner circle.

The most challenging bit was to get the team to work together in harmony. She knew that a house divided would not stand the test of time. A productive team must cultivate positive impact relationships. Bringing them together was one thing, getting them to work harmoniously was the harder part. Have the patience to encourage members of your inner circle to work together.

People are highly resistant to change. We are creatures of habit and these habits are cultivated over time. Her vision demanded a migration from the company’s norm. Great ideas are often driven by radical changes. As soon as she brought together her inner circle, she got them to see the benefit and possibility of changing things in the organisation. It was a tall order. She had to break their view and introduce a new picture, the new vision. You must get your inner circle to buy into your vision or else the team's efforts will be pulling in opposite directions.

Extraordinary success is not the work of a lone ranger. Who are the members of your inner circle? What strengths do they bring to the table? Are there strength gaps that need to be filled in your inner circle? Recognise the crucial role played by your inner circle and be intentional in building the right relationships around you.

Tent Mindset

"The only permanent thing in life is change. " ~ Heraclitus.

What was state-of-the-art yesterday, today it is obsolete. In today's technologically advanced society, old solutions are being overtaken by new inventions in quick succession. If you want to enjoy life and get the best out of it, you must be change receptive. You have to constantly renew yourself to embrace new and different ways of doing things.

An easy way to adapt to changing times is to have what I call a “tent mindset”. Grow an attitude that easily shuts down what has become your norm in interpreting and responding to situations and adapt new methods. Such a mindset can be described by looking at a nomad's lifestyle. A nomad moves from place to place in order to make a living. They live in areas where food availability is seasonal and keep moving as seasons change in search of greener pastures.

Nomads live in temporary shelters. They are wary of getting too comfortable in their current circumstances of affluence and abundance. They quickly discern when the season is changing as supplies dwindle and begin preparing to move. Their tent shelters make it easy to break up camp and shift to another place when the season changes. There is no such thing as a permanent comfort zone in the life of a nomad. They know when to move, when to stay and what to do in different situations.

Everything that has a capacity for growth goes through different stages in its life cycle. A butterfly is first an egg, then larvae, pupa before it turns into an adult. A human being first grows in the mother's womb and even when birthed, they are babies, toddlers, children, teenagers, young adults, adults and so forth. In business, an organisation goes through an inception stage then a growth stage, reaches maturity and then the decline phase.

In all stages of growth there is a need to change. Teenagers are expected to be more independent than babies. They change their way of thinking. The size of their clothes is larger. They no longer survive on milk only and their capacity to learn is exponentially higher. They have to embrace change in order to grow into the adults they long to become. In the same way, leaders who have a big vision for their organisation, must embrace change whole-heartedly. If they desire to grow, then they must be ready to change and that change will be constant.  

The first step towards change is to have a vision. A vision that is bigger than your present status. Where do you see the organization you leade in 10, 15 years? Draw the picture. Everything we see in the physical today was once a mental picture. Make certain that the end goal is vivid.

The next thing you need to do while in your current state is to start building your capacity for the anticipated growth. Imagine you run an airline with a fleet of 25-seater aircraft. Your airlinebrand becomes so popular that you have bookings and enquiries that could fill a 70-seater aircrafts. It would be foolish and extremely dangerous to attempt fitting 70 passengers in the current 25-seater aircraft in a single flight. As a matter of fact the aircraft may never take off! You must build the capacity to accommodate growth.

Does your current organisation structure have the capacity to take up more? If your growth plan entails going international, have you considered changing your working currency to an internationally recognised currency? Have you invested in learning the culture of your target markets in other countries? If your vision is to expand your small restaurant into a five-star hotel, does your chef know how to make a continental breakfast, French cuisine, Indian cuisine or Thai cuisine to cater for your foreign guests or is his skill limited to local tastes? You now have 15 people in your staff, but your vision will require at least 100 staff members, will they fit in your current office space? Are your systems capable of accommodating the growth?

If you have a tent mentality, it will be easy for you to lead your staff into adapting an international currency to accommodate foreign customers. You will have the courage to release your favorite chef and recruit one with international exposure that is suited to a five-star hotel. You will even move your office from the back side of the city to a larger office with state of the art equipment. You will build systems and structures commensurate to what you have envisioned as your next phase of growth.

A tent mindset allows you to wave goodbye to the current status which you have grown fond of and take a risk into the next phase. You have to be agile enough to destroy your current structures and beliefs and build new structures that accommodate the envisioned status. You may have to let go of those you have grown with unapologetically as long as they make it their business to block the change. You have to be ruthless in choosing change enablers to move with you to the next phase.  Count the cost of change; are you ready to incur this cost?

A double-minded man is unstable in all his ways. If you want to steer successful change, you must have a solid focus. A solid focus means that you should never lose sight of your target - you may change your methods or the route you take, but you should never be derailed off your focus. Change is painful and you will have a tendency to wish back the "good ol' days", but you must stay steadfast on your target. You have to keep reminding those around you the importance of reaching the target so that you do not lose momentum. Have a spirit of excellence that refuses to settle for anything but the best that you have chosen to pursue.

The day you stop growing, you will start dying. Growth demands building your capacity and being agile enough to embrace change – sometimes even drastic changes. Do not hold onto the old. Fold up the old structures and ways of thinking. Be open to new ideas and embrace change. If you want to grow, change is inevitable. Don’t fight it – embrace it.