Learn to Unlearn

I’ve blogged about this topic before but events from last week prompted me to address it again. I had lunch with another CEO and he mentioned hiring a new COO. To give this some context, the CEO is a founder and has had terrible luck over the past few years hiring senior level executives. So why did he hire this guy? He said to me,”The guy said to me the only thing he had mastered in almost 30 years of experience was the art of learning.” He went on to explain to me how the COO walked him through how he learns, with a respectful disregard to what he had already learned or mastered.

Defining Growth

In a seemingly innocuous conversation last week, I was asked how to define and measure personal growth. How do you know you have grown from say a year ago, several years ago, or even from last week? The obvious answer was that you are doing something that you routinely do, but you are doing it better. Perhaps you are happier or you are meeting your goals or you have been promoted or are getting actual formal feedback from your boss, peers, or customers. But these are “outcomes” of a process where “you are doing things better.”

Right Advice

There is a wonderful scene in “Father of the Bride” (Steve Martin comedy movie) where he tells his daughter to put a sweater on because it’s cold outside and she ignores him several times. Then her fiancée asks her to do the same and she immediately puts it on. The same good advice was not heard from one source, but immediately embraced from another.

Coaching is not Motivation

Last week I spent time with a coach of a professional team. He came to my office and confessed that he realized that all the things he had learned and mastered in life were no longer enough to work with athletes almost 40 years younger than him in this world of constant connection and transparency. He made a decision that before the start of the new season, he was going to learn something new. My first question was what troubled him the most. His response? “I have great athletes who lack desire and hunger to succeed. How can I get them motivated?”