Legacy

by James Kerr

Waiho mā te tangata e mihi. 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.

‘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.’

‘The challenge of every team is to build a feeling of oneness, of dependence on one another,’ said Vince Lombardi. ‘Because the question is usually not how well each person performs, but how well they work together.’

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

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

‘What is the All Blacks’ competitive advantage?’, key is the ability to manage their culture and central narrative by attaching the players’ personal meaning to a higher purpose. It is the identity of the team that matters – not so much what the All Blacks do, but who they are, what they stand for, and why they exist.

To become an All Black means becoming a steward of a cultural legacy. Your role is to leave the jersey in a better place.

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?

It is a facilitated style of interpersonal leadership in a learning environment concerned with adaptive problem solving and continuous improvement and in which humility – not knowing all the answers – delivers strength.

No one person has all the answers, but asking questions challenges the status quo, helps connect with core values and beliefs, and is a catalyst for individual improvement.

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

Decision Cycle or OODA Loop. OODA stands for Observe, Orient, Decide and Act.

Hawthorne Effect’, the idea that emotional reward is more important than material compensation.

Inspired leaders, organizations and teams find their deepest purpose – their ‘why?’ – and attract followers through shared values, vision and beliefs.

Ubuntu is ‘the essence of being human,’ says Bishop Desmond Tutu. ‘Ubuntu speaks particularly about the fact that you can’t exist as a human being in isolation. It speaks about our interconnectedness.

‘My army won because they knew what they were fighting for,’ said Oliver Cromwell, ‘and loved what they knew.’

leaders create a sense of inclusion, connectedness and unity – a truly collective, collaborative mindset. It begins by asking ‘Why? Why are we doing this? Why am I sacrificing myself for this project? What is the higher purpose?’

‘Pass the Ball’, defined as ‘enabling and empowering the individual by entrusting them with responsibility for the success of the team’.

Leaders create leaders by passing on responsibility, creating ownership, accountability and trust.

Shared responsibility means shared ownership. A sense of inclusion means individuals are more willing to give themselves to a common cause.

In the book All In: The Education of General David Petraeus, the former commander of US forces in Afghanistan, says, ‘Instill in your team members a sense of great self-worth – that each, at any given time, can be the most important on the battlefield.’

‘People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on,’ Apple founder Steve Jobs told the writer Walter Isaacson, ‘but that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that are there. You’ve got to pick carefully.’

‘What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments,’ to paraphrase the Greek statesman Pericles, ‘but what is woven into the lives of others.’ Your legacy is that which you teach.

Jackson would quote Rudyard Kipling: For the Strength of the Pack is the Wolf, and the strength of the Wolf is the Pack.

The strength of the wolf is the pack.

In his book Good to Great, Jim Collins argues for the primacy of the ‘who’ before the ‘what’; the ‘we’ before the ‘me’. He quotes Ken Kesey in The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test: ‘You’re either on the bus or off the bus.’ His research shows that ‘good to great leaders began by first getting the right people on the bus (and the wrong people off the bus) and then figured out where to drive it’.

Great leaders ruthlessly protect their people, encouraging connection, collaboration and collective ownership, nurturing a safe environment of trust, respect and family.

‘A strong dislike of not being good enough is healthy,’ says Andrew Mehrtens. ‘I would do anything to win, except cheating, of course. I hated losing. Really hated losing.’

where we direct our mind is where our thoughts will take us; our thoughts create an emotion; the emotion defines our behaviour; our behaviour defines our performance. So, simply, if we can control our attention, and therefore our thoughts, we can manage our emotions and enhance our performance.

‘Invariably under pressure it is the thinking that shuts down and that means you are relying on emotion and instinct and can no longer pick up the cues and information to make good decisions.’

The Rule of Three is the way humans tell stories; with a beginning, a middle and an end.

Maps and mantras allows us to, in Gilbert Enoka’s phrase, ‘meet pressure with pressure’; that is, rather than feeling it, we can apply it. By controlling our attention we control our performance, by controlling our performance we control the game.

Mā te rongo, ka mōhio; Mā te mōhio, ka mārama; Mā te mārama, ka mātau; Mā te mātau, ka ora. From listening comes knowledge; From knowledge comes understanding; From understanding comes wisdom; From wisdom comes well-being.

‘When deeds speak,’ says Wayne Smith, ‘words are nothing.’

‘Authenticity,’ according to leadership writer Lance Secretan, ‘is the alignment of head, mouth, heart and feet – thinking, saying and doing the same thing consistently.

War makes few distinctions between men. As the Italian proverb says, ‘At the end of the game, the king and the pawn go back in the same box’.

Psychology professor Steven Pinker wrote, ‘Wisdom consists of appreciating the preciousness and finiteness of our own existence, and therefore not squandering it.’

Leaders are storytellers. All great organizations are born from a compelling story. This central organizing thought helps people understand what they stand for and why.

‘Tell me and I’ll forget,’ goes the old saying, ‘show me and I may remember; involve me and I’ll understand.’

‘Our ancestors of the mind include the great thinkers of Ancient Greece. The dramatists . . . the scientists . . . the mathematicians . . . the philosophers and moralists Socrates and Plato and Aristotle. All believed in the importance of ideas, the power of ideas, all believed that the highest purpose of humanity was to define the nature of truth, beauty, and justice.’

‘Example is not the main thing in influencing others,’ said the philosopher Albert Schweitzer. ‘It is the only thing.’

As an Old Greek proverb tells us, ‘A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they will never see’.

There is nothing wrong with making money but as a sole ambition it certainly isn’t inspiring an emerging generation that values human connection, social interaction and authenticity more highly.

John Wooden said, ‘Be more concerned with your character than your reputation, because your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are.’

Te tōrino haere whakamua, whakamuri. At the same time as the spiral is going forward, it is also returning.

Ehara taku toa i te toa takitahi, engari he toa takitini. Any success should not be attributed to me alone; it was the work of us all.

Waiho kia pātai ana, he kaha ui te kaha. Let the questioning continue; the ability of the person is in asking questions.