TVC081 Paddling With Knives

 

Paddling With Knives. 

Why conviction is crucial for success, taking leaps of faith and how to create a culture where fear of failure does not exist.I took this to The Panel. A new set of episodes with friends of mine and thought leaders Stephen Scott Johnson (author of Emergent) and Mark Truelson (Mr Disruption). 

On this episode we talk about how to stop making lots of noise without actually doing anything and to be successful in business and in life you need to be able to lead from the front. 4 Steps to turn yourself around to take leaps of faith and lean in to the fear for greater rewards.

 

What does is mean to be paddling with knives, how can you stop the strive and start the thrive.

* Identifying those around you who make a lot of noise but don’t get a lot of things done

* Identifying your own road blocks and fear of failure

What to do when you feel like when people around you, or yourself are really, really busy, but nothing’s happening?

Paddling With Knives – Where’s that analogy from?

It’s actually a surf analogy. When you’re going into a massive, big wave, and, instead of doing big strokes, with nice, conscious effort, you’re paddling with your hands like knives,  sideways instead of pulling through the water. Which means creating a lot of fuss and not a lot of movement.

Usually, this is caused by a sense of fear, or a sense of needing to hold back. So how does that relate to every day life. When people create a lot of noise and activity but are not actually getting anywhere, being productive or delivering on what they promise.

What could be holding your team or you back? Lets start with a corporate environment.

More organisations than we realise are actually experiencing this inertia, and part of the deeper problem.

It’s like the iceberg, this is just the surface. That whole lack of momentum and a stickability is just because there’s a deeper incongruence of purpose between what lights up individuals and the strategic vision or direction of the organisation that they work in.

In my experience, the only way to help to get some kind of momentum, cohesion around a purpose. Stephen Johnson: 

Removing the Fear and Creating a Safe Space To Thrive

Create an environment where people can contribute together to actually design what that purpose looks like.

If you’re not sure, just ask.

“As a company, even though you’ve got ‘purpose’, you still have to have a way of checking that people aren’t pretending they’re all over it and getting things done.  Make it safe for people to say they are not sure what you want or how to deliver”

Ask those really tough questions:

How do our various skills contribute to bringing that to life?

Is there a complex problem that intersects with our business in society?

Are we suffering from legacy systems and processes that are, as Simon Sinek would say, bad for business and bad for people. Is that going on?

Nikki F.: Yeah, and that means people can hide in between the gaps then, right? And I think is a disruptive leadership thing as well, is that you’ve got to call people out when they’re making a fuss with no traction.

Having worked with corporates nearly all my life, I’m always fascinated that a lot of this comes to the environment, that we should provide for our employees, that it seems that we’re playing not to lose, rather than playing to win, and I think there’s a real fear that comes with this. Mark Truelson

Anything that comes with disruption, we’d rather not go about it,