Liz Wiseman argues that leaders need deliberate rituals to stay in a rookie mindset. She uses examples from Bob Hurley and Francois Truffaut to show how returning to a beginner's perspective drives innovation and keeps work satisfying.
As I looked at what was common across so many of these interesting leaders and professionals, they all had a deliberate ritual, something that helped them go back to their rookie roots. This is Bob Hurley. I imagine some of you are anyone sporting some Hurley brand right now. Bob started Hurley Sports as a surfboard shaper. He built this company into this large, global, successful enterprise that he then sold to Nike. He's still the CEO of this company. And he described his journey to build Hurley Sports. He said, at every juncture, I had no idea what I was doing. And it turned out to be an advantage. And rather than tell you about this series of rookie moves, I think what's more interesting about Bob is how he maintains this playful but, you know, ferocious drive in his work. I went down to see spend some time with Bob, and you could tell he's this playful, joyful leader. I said, but, Bob, how do you maintain it? And he said, I have my good days. I have the days where the ideas flow, and I'm just kind of in that sort of groove. And I have days where I'm absolutely stuck in a rut. And he said, on those days, I remembered something that happened many years ago on Huntington Beach. So Bob began his career as a surfer, and on Huntington Beach. I don't know if there's anyone here who comes from Huntington beach, but it sounds like a clique that's probably a tighter click than a high school. And there's parts of the beach which are sort of reserved for the elite surfers. And then there are the other parts of the beach that sort of relegated to the kind of mere mortals. Now, Bob was just on the outer edge of this group of elite surfers, and he's out surfing one day, kind of in the prime waves, and he loses his board. And he goes under the pier to go fetch his board. And on the other side of the pier, he sees someone he knows. It's Wayne Bartholomew. He's the reigning world champion surfer from Australia, and they call him Rabbit. And he sees him surfing over in kind of the lesser waves, the baby waves. And he shouts out to him. He's like, and I do come from California. I should probably be able to do a decent job of this. But he says something to the effect of like, dude, dude, you're a legend. Like, hey, come surf with us over here. The waves are like, righteous. We're stoked or something like this. And. And the world champion surfer says to him, he says, like, that's kind of your mate. But I like to surf over here with the Kids, it's where I get my energy. And Bob said one of the things that's helped him maintain this rookie point of view is he said, when I have those bad days, I go out and I surf with the amateurs. You know, sometimes I grab my board and I literally go surfing. And he goes down to the beach not to surf with the Hurley sponsored surfers, most of whom he knows. He goes down and he surfs with the kids, the young and the young at heart. And it's where he gains his energy. And on days where the waves aren't good or he doesn't have the time, he simply walks down the hall and he seeks out the newcomers, the recent college grads, the rookies, or the people who are in a rookie assignment. And he specializes there learning from them, and they revitalize his own point of view. This is Francois Truffaut, a French film director who, before he died in his 50s, he had directed 25 films. He had this interesting ritual as he began each film. He would go back to the bookstore in Paris where he first bought a book. When he was directing his very first film, he bought a book on how to direct a film. He goes back to the bookstore, rebuys the book, rereads the book to remember what it was like when he didn't know how to do this. A very dear mentor of mine, Dr. CK Prahalad from the University of Michigan, who. This incredibly renowned management scholar lecturer, who was this. He was a fire hazard to the university because his courses were perpetually over subscribed as people just flocked the halls to hear him. He passed about four years ago. @ his memorial, his wife shared a story with us. She had been in his office and she found, in the trash bin, she found this stack of notes and they looked important and she pulled them out. These were CK's lecture notes. And that evening she says to him, prahlad, I found your lecture notes. And he said, thank you, but I put him there. And she was just shocked. I mean, horrified. His most precious, valuable professional resource. He said, I throw him away every semester because I think my students deserve my best thinking. Fresh examples and fresh thinking. Every semester, he threw away his teaching notes. And lastly, an entrepreneur, it's a CEO of an Internet firm here in the Valley, who said to me, when he gets stuck and he feels like his company isn't innovating and stuck, he says, I go for a long walk in one direction and I don't allow myself to turn back until I've had a legitimately novel idea. And he said, someday. These walks are really long. And if that's not extreme enough, he said, on the really tough days, I go into my closet. And he said, and now you can't tell anyone my name. Because he goes into his closet and he strips down to next to nothing. Or I kind of got the sense it was to nothing. And he says, and I just think, now, I'm not in any way suggesting you do this, certainly not while you have roommates, but I thought it was an interesting practice because what is he shedding? I don't think he's. That he's shedding his outer clothes. He's shedding what, Assumptions, beliefs, practices. Shedding that down, stripping down to the core so he can see things fresh. I think if I've learned anything studying rookies, studying these people I call perpetual rookies, it's this is that when we work in our rookie space, when we're actually in our space of not knowing, it's powerful. We tend to operate at our very best. For some reason, it pulls out the very best in us. But the other thing I've learned in talking to people about what it's like working in a space of unknown, it's actually where we feel our greatest joy. It's where we feel our most satisfied. People say, I want to be a rookie again because I felt so.
O processo de reconhecer limites, mesmo quando a vida parece exigir sempre mais.
Depois de tantas histórias, aprendizados e pausas necessárias, o @interior_iza está de volta
