Why Leaders Stop Growing

It’s So Simple, You Just Missed It!

The moral of this story: Executives often are too busy trying to look smart; by doing so, they dismiss the solutions that are in plain sight. As leaders, we often forget, we get what we set oursleves up for.Many executives are worried about how competition might kill their company, when in reality, they are doing a more than adequate job on their own of committing corporate suicide.I recently gave a talk to a room full of Fortune 500 C-level executives about the Top 12 Warning Signs of Success™. One of the executives commented that these warning signs were very elementary compared to their “real” issues, such as figuring out their global go-to-market strategy. What she didn’t know was that I gave the exact same talk to 75 of the top managers and leaders in her company just a month earlier. She was perplexed to learn that these 75 people, many of whom report directly to her, said the top 3 issues facing their company were (click on for full explanation):Warning Sign #2 – DRINKING THE CHAOS KOOL-AIDWarning Sign #7 – HOPE IS NOT A STRATEGYWarning Sign #12 – SEWING THE SEEDS OF DECAYThey said if the executives would address these Warning Signs head on, they could actually start doing what they were hired to do, and the issues around figuring out the global go-to-market strategy would not be so difficult.If this high-powered, highly educated, well-traveled, overly confident executive really knew exactly what her company needed to go to the next level, then why did those 75 people state something very different?Too many times, we dismiss the overly obvious and embarrassingly simple repairs we and our company need to tackle in order to scale. My advice: Get out of your chair and go ask your people what they think are the top 3 “things” your company needs to start, stop or change in order to increase productivity and profitability. Better yet, show your team The Top 12 Warning Signs of Success™ and see if they think any of them are present in your company.If these leaders knew what to do, why did their direct reports say something different?