Legacy: What the All Blacks Can Teach Us About the Business of Life

by James Kerr

Let someone else praise your virtues.

The challenge is to always improve, to always get better, even when you are the best. Especially when you are the best.

A collection of talented individuals without personal discipline will ultimately and inevitably fail. Character triumphs over talent.

Only by knowing yourself can you become an effective leader.

‘I Am’; a fundamental understanding and appreciation of our own personal values.

‘What is my job on the planet? What is it that needs doing, that I know something about, that probably won’t happen unless I take responsibility for it?’

‘Winning takes talent,’ John Wooden would say. ‘To repeat it takes character.’

rather than obsessing about the results, you focus on the team.’

Collective character is vital to success. Focus on getting the culture right; the results will follow.

Performance = Capability + Behaviour

‘Leaders create the right environment for the right behaviours to occur,’ says Eastwood. ‘That’s their primary role.’

‘Vision into Action’ paradox.

Vision without action is a dream. Action without vision is a nightmare.

The ability – or inability – to convert vision into action.

More often through the inability to translate vision into simple, ordinary, everyday actions.’

They picked on character.

Ethos is the Greek word for character. Descended from the same root as the word ethics, it is used to describe the beliefs, principles, values, codes and culture of an organization. It is the ‘way we do things around here’,

Our values decide our character. Our character decides our value.

attaching the players’ personal meaning to a higher purpose.

‘What is my job on the planet? What is it that needs doing, that I know something about, that probably won’t happen unless I take responsibility for it?’ Buckminster Fuller

The goal? To help them find self-knowledge, even if the truth turns out to be uncomfortable.

Let the questioning continue; the ability of the person is in asking questions.

A culture of asking and re-asking fundamental questions cuts away unhelpful beliefs in order to achieve clarity of execution. Humility allows us to ask a simple question: how can we do this better?

The word decide comes from ‘to cut away’.

adaptive problem solving and continuous improvement and in which humility – not knowing all the answers – delivers strength.

try and get descriptive answers so you get self-awareness.’

the better the questions we ask, the better the answers we get.

Humility does not mean weakness, but its opposite. Leaders with mana understand the strength of humility. It allows them to connect with their deepest values and the wider world.

‘Lay first the foundation of humility . . . The higher your structure is to be, the deeper must be its foundation.’

character over talent.

never to get too big to do the small things that need to be done.

enabling an interrogative, highly facilitated learning environment in which no one has all the answers.

When you’re on top of your game, change your game

A Case for Change; ° A Compelling Picture of the Future; ° A Sustained Capability to Change; ° A Credible Plan to Execute.

‘an environment . . . that would stimulate the players and make them want to take part in it’.

‘more skin in the game’.

A winning organization is an environment of personal and professional development, in which each individual takes responsibility and shares ownership.

Leaders create leaders.

Learning, Growth and Decline.

At first an anomaly, it eventually becomes the painful norm.

The key, of course, is when we’re on top of our game, to change our game; to exit relationships, recruit new talent, alter tactics, reassess strategy.

What steps do you need to consider taking so you can prepare for the second curve, without prematurely leaving your current success (on the first curve) behind?

kaizan,

Organizational decline is inevitable unless leaders prepare for change – even when standing at the pinnacle of success.

VUCA: Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous.

‘Destruction and Creation’,

OODA stands for Observe, Orient, Decide and Act.

‘It is not the strongest species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the ones most responsive to change.’ Charles Darwin

It isn’t just reacting to what’s happening in the moment, it is being the agent of change.

adapting quickly to change by creating an adaptive culture.