Behind the Scenes at Global-Roam

My twelve year journey with this company – seeing it grow its customer base, and product range, from nothing to be quite substantial – has been one of great learning for me.

Of my greatest areas of learning has been with respect to others within in the company.  I have struggled, at times, due to my lack of prior experience and preparation.

For some time I’ve been pondering the apparent paradoxes across a variety of books and other materials I’ve read – with respect to the concept of Strengths and Weaknesses.

Where I have read this, it has been with respect to an individual’s own strengths and weaknesses – however I believe that the pointers that I’ve learnt are also applicable at an organisational level (where a strength is more commonly termed “competitive advantage”).

After quite a bit of reflection, it currently* seems that to be truly strong, an individual (or a company) needs to have the right combination of all three of the following factors:

* I say “currently”, as it seems that the learning journey I am on almost guarantees that my view will become even more nuanced in future.

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Picked this book up some time ago, perhaps after seeing Daniel Pink give this presentation of the importance of Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose.

Read it back then, and have re-read recently as I’ve been casting my mind forward to the next recruitment initiatives.

The Book	What we thought
“Drive – the surprising truth about what motivates us” by Daniel Pink	Well worth it for us

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The content of this book is very much along the lines of the talk at TED – which  means that, if you are not aligned with the belief that Intrinsic Motivation is more important than Extrinsic Motivation (after watching the lecture), then the book will probably do nothing further for you.

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Picked up “Little Bets” [since reviewed here] by Peter Sims this week, as the underlying theme of the book is something we’ve been striving to base our business around (we’re getting closer every month).

As some background to the main message of the book, the author provides a chapter on the “Growth Mindset”.

I’ve heard a similar dichotomy of views expressed in other contexts before (such as with respect to two conflicting views of wealth creation, and in terms of negotiation) but have not seen it explained in relation to personal development before.

Given where we’ve come from, and where we’re headed, I have included some excerpts here (from p36):

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In some ways, I believe that it is.

I’ll spoil the punch-line -  eighteen months ago I posted about how 10,000 hours of “dedicated practice” are required to reach true mastery of any discipline.

This book is one of several that take up this theme, and which were referenced in the news articles linked in the post above.  Other books include “Outliers”, plus many others we have not read.

The Book	What we thought
“Talent is Overrated” by Geoff Colvin	Well worth reading for greater depth than the articles quoted in the post above

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We’ve had these books in the library at work for a couple of years.

Some time ago some of the guys who were working with us at the time had a read and gave their reviews. Unfortunately the core message was lost in translation – hence, I did not (at that time) form a favourable opinion of the books.

More recently I’ve started reading through them, and found they are well worth a read.  In my view they don’t form the whole picture of what needs to be considered (more on that later), but they do provide valuable insights.

Rather than review each separately I have grouped them together here.  I’ve only read two currently, and so might update this post later, whenever I have had time to read the others.

“First break all the rules” by Buckingham & Coffman	“Now Discover your Strengths” by Buckingham & Clifton	“The One Thing you Need to Know” by Buckingham	“Go put your Strengths to Work” by Buckingham
	Have not read it yet		Have not read it yet

Frequent visitors to the blog might be asking yourself “Why so many book reviews”? – if so, see here…

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This week I was interested to read an article in the AFR titled “Picking leaders the brainy way”.  For internal staff, the PDFed article is in eLibrary.

This was of particular interest to me, as I know that this is a challenge that we have struggled with over the past 10 years.   Hence, we’re keen to improve at it, as much as we can (and, by extension, if you can help us do so, we’d like to hear from you).

Note that this is not to say that we have a bad bunch of employees currently – just that we’ve had to do a bit of “getting the right people on the bus” in the past, and probably will have to do more in future.

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For those who found value in the previous post about the 10,000 hour prerequisite required to achieve “Guru” status in your chosen field, there was a related article in the AFR recently.

The article “Open your mind to growth” (15th September) was written to promote the release of the book “Mindest: the new psychology of success” by Stanford psychology professor, Carol Dweck.

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As noted previously, I have challenged all employees (and a few absent shareholders might participate, as well) to select an area of value to the company and undertake (in that area) to progressively develop their capability till they reach “Guru Status”.

That’s why we found these three articles to be of great interest.

”A star is Made” by Stephen J Dubner and Steven D Levitt
New York Times.   7th May 2006
(note, Dubner and Levitt are from Freakonomics)

“Success is all in the mind” by Shelley Gare
The Australian.  24th January 2009

“A wealth of explanations for earthly riches” by Sue Halpern
AFR.  7th August 2009

For employees, there’s copies of all 3 articles saved for each in our eLibrary:
L:\Market Information\By Issue\Management

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