In his book How The Mighty Fall, Jim Collins tells the story of a group of Brazilian investors would bought a discount retail chain in South America. After their purchase, they sent letters out to 10 CEOs in North America asking to meet to learn about discount retailing in America. 9 CEOs turned him down. 1 accepted: Sam Walton of Walmart. When they made it to Arkansas, Walton met them personally and proceeded to barrage them with question after question about retailing in Latin America. Soon it became clear that the founder of one of the biggest companies in the world didn’t accept the meeting to teach the Brazilians – he took it to learn from them.
It is this type of humble inquisitiveness that fended off the hubris born of success that Collins sites as the first stage organizations go through when they are on the path towards failure, noting that the best leaders in the world never presume that they’ve reached the ultimate understanding of all the factors that have brought them success. They use every opportunity to further their depth of knowledge, relentlessly sucking every bit of information from the people they meet. Collins argues that “knowing people” (opposed to “learning people”) will ultimately fail for the following reasons:
- They view success as deserved rather than as the result of a lot of hard work, mixed with a little luck. From there, they start to think that success will just naturally come no matter what.
- The “What” starts to replace the “Why”. They see their success as a result of doing specific things rather than understanding WHY they are doing those things and under what conditions these things may or may not be successful.
- They lose their inquisitiveness. No matter how successful an individual becomes, it’s this desire to learn that will be the key to keeping them on top.
I thought about this book a lot last night over dinner with a group of folks at a conference that came together specifically for folks who wanted to have dinner with people they didn’t know. It was a diverse group of folks – age, background, experience, profession – and with all of the different views and perspectives, there was a lot to be learned. But one person at the table clearly did not want to be there. She shut down, didn’t talk or engage, and played on her phone for most of the dinner. And I thought “wow, that’s too bad.” This was an opportunity to step outside of her comfort zone and learn from people she wouldn’t normally hang out with and instead she sat there texting on her phone. When dinner was over, she couldn’t get up and run back over to her comfort zone quickly enough. It really changed my view of her and I was left thinking “I really hope she grows out of that because she has so much potential”.
The moral of the story is this: When you stop learning, you start failing. You may not fail today – this is just the first of five stages that Collins discusses – but you’ve set yourself on a course where you could some day. The key to success is not knowing what to do, but why it’s the right thing to do. Take advantage of every opportunity to learn from the people around you, particularly those co-workers who you do not see eye to eye with.
Here’s Your “To Do”: Offer to take a co-worker you disagree with to lunch and make a concerted effort to understand their point of view. Don’t push you agenda. Instead, ask them questions. You’ll not only expand your own knowledge of the “why”, but you also may walk away with a better relationship with this person than you ever thought was possible.
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