Growing people is the objective of great business
Why a virtual dojo is a must-have if you want teams to achieve high performance
It’s not the perpetual snakes and ladders of promotion and climbing the dizzy heights of an organizational chart that’s going to help you grow, that’s for sure.
It’s logical.
The world is going to hell in a hand basket; and we still have leadership and executive teams playing the flute Nero like while Rome burns. Who cares what square you will land on. If you don’t act, there won’t be any squares. They will have burnt down, or submerged, whilst you’re playing politics.
Performance is a mental game. Austerity and cost-cutting do not create the foundation for creative strategies and innovative ideas. For the love of god, even the IMF says austerity doesn’t work.
If you are running a business, leading a business, part of a business.
Then wake up, please;
Pretty please.
The organization as a machine, or software system, is over.
What’s in is agile, creativity and innovation built on a foundation of soft skills, skills that power your organization — now called power skills.
There is now a direct correlation between business performance and human growth. Leaders and teams no need to equip themselves with the skill, techniques, tools, skills, resources, and structures to solve problems and create alternatives at speed.
At the heart of this transformation is learning. Or should I say re-learning.
And no, you can’t put lipstick on a pig and hope to get away with surface transformation.
Change management requires a shift in your mental game.
Teams and leaders are going to have to get out of their comfort zones and face up to the challenges of winning in an unstable environment that frankly doesn’t take any prisoners if you fail.
“The challenges of changing demographics, shifting work patterns, and social responsibility require new ways of working, and that is only possible through creativity and innovation. To rework a trope: doing business as usual while expecting a different result is the definition of insanity.” — Andrew Swinand
Looking at elite athletes is an excellent example of best practice that can influence and offer deep inspiration to teams and leaders. Winning in sport is never, ever easy. It requires dedication and an ambition to achieve excellence for your team, at a local and national level.
Competition reveals both your character and strengths and weaknesses. There is no place to hide on a training ground.
In the Netflix Untold: The Race of the Century series, we discover the unbelievable ambition, leadership, teamwork, and innovation of the Australia II crew as they fight to achieve their historic victory in the 1983 America’s cup.
If you are interested in the real dynamics of leadership…
The real blood, sweat and tears that go into performances that become legendary. Feats of achievement of a group of ordinary seeming blokes to capture a nation’s heart, then this is your story.
It is a narrative, a fairy tale of epic proportions.
It’s the New York Yacht Club who have won this race for 132 years without failure and their current Captain Dennis Conner, who had won 38 consecutive races. John Bertrand, skipper of the Australia II yacht, leads his team through a journey of to hell and back. He leads from the front. Always. He seeks new ways of thinking. He studies the USA game plan in detail and creates a plan to defeat them. He brings in new designers who are not held prisoner by the traditions and habits of the industry. And he trains and trains his team in the mental game of being in the Zone. The place where performance flies by itself. Almost unaided by — but certainly powered by — human performance.
“But beyond the crew it was clearly of paramount importance to find a new design for a fast sailboat: Alan Bond, who backed the venture, called Ben Lexcen, an unusual yacht designer. After studies in the Dutch naval tank and continuing to learn movements from nature, Lexcen shocked everyone with his yacht Australia II, featuring an innovative winged keel unlike the traditional 12-meter sailing yacht designs.” — Mariateresa Campolongo for Elle Decor
As part of the mental game. The Australian skipper used visualization techniques. He got his team to lie on their backs on the boat. Then he got them to imagine that they were an eagle. An eagle soaring high over the boat. Seeing the wider picture. Floating free on the winds. Not bothered by the surrounding minutiae. Free from the negative emotions holding them down. There are no thoughts as you fly. Just clear blue space. Floating. Time stills. And focus comes naturally.
Leading a team — being a peer-driven team, an empowered team — is about unlocking and achieving your potential. It is about understanding your obstacles and training to overcome them. It’s about working together to achieve excellence.
“In order to get these results, employees need to be empowered to make decisions efficiently and work with a bias for action. This will likely involve a vast, top-down mindset shift, in addition to adopting a new framework for decision-making. It’ll look different for every organization and every industry, but the basic structure involves removing hurdles and red tape and ultimately giving team members the power to make and act on decisions.” — Sid Sijbrandij, co-founder of GitLab
The first step in growing teams and leaders with a new mindset is to get a virtual dojo.
Why?
Because this game is not at the level of theory.
It’s at the level of habit.
It’s about behavioral change.
It’s about learning to create alignment. Real alignment. With the heart, not the brain. And that requires real leadership and people engagement.
What’s a virtual dojo?
It’s a video game simulation where you can bring teams together with leaders and coaches to compete competitively. The simulation challenges the participants. Seriously challenges the teams to get good. It’s about getting teams to a level of unconscious competence in which they flow. It’s about upgrading their skills by growing them. It’s about setting the performance bar high enough that it is exciting to step and take on the challenges, and then take your learning and new skills directly into your work environment.
It’s about getting your teams and leaders to fly like an eagle and practicing winning. If the Australia II team. A group of ordinary people can break the mold. Then so can you and your team? The only thing stopping you is YOU!