Tag Archive for: management

Do ‘C’ students run the world?

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Leadership begins where excuses end.

Kobe Joseph

Have you heard the saying, “The ‘C’ students run the world.”? The quote has been attributed to Harry Truman, though Chat GPT informs me that the truth of the quote’s origin is only, “plausible but unverified.”

Regardless of who said it, behind many popular quotes lies some degree of wisdom, so let’s start by checking the validity of it. Do the early educational achievers – valedictorians, ivy leaguers, and so on – come to dominate the business world, or do we see plenty of the so-called ‘C’ students on top?

When documenting the educational backgrounds of Fortune 500 CEOs in 1999, David Kang, a Dartmouth Tuck professor, found that the most common bachelor’s degree held among them was not from Stanford, Harvard, MIT, West Point, or any other elite university – it was having no degree at all. While there certainly are academic elites at the top, there are just as many great leaders who found their stride later and rose to the top.

So… how does this work? What can bring supposed ‘A’ students down to normalcy and ‘C’ students into success?

A critical factor to look at is a simple mindset difference. The ‘A’ student often considers himself or herself to be gifted – innately smart, talented, and born with outstanding ability – whereas the ‘C’ student might not hold the same internal assumptions.

These internal assumptions can affect something called your locus of control. If you have an external locus of control, you tend to believe circumstances dictate your life. With an internal locus of control, you more so believe that you dictate your life. People who get labelled as “intelligent” or “talented” can often attribute their success to traits they possess but cannot change, contributing to the formation of an external locus of control. The unseen benefit to those with a less exceptional start is that they can more often identify themselves with controllable qualities, such as being “hard-working” or “reliable” and develop an internal locus of control.

This matters because it completely changes how you recover from adversity.

Imagine you’re faced with this scenario, which I found myself in a few weeks ago: you’re presenting an analysis to an executive and, suddenly, they tell you your dataset is wrong (and it is). Whose fault is it? There’s two ways to respond:

  1. Well, someone gave me the wrong data. It was their fault.
  2. I should have been more diligent, tested my assumptions, and found the problem. It was my fault.

If you choose option 1, while it may be true, you’ll find no way to improve upon the error. You didn’t cause it, so why should you fix it? But, if you respond with option 2, you can find ways to learn and become better – all because you took ownership of an issue that might not have been your mistake.

In your organization, even when you make a mistake (as we all do inevitably), don’t follow it up with a much more serious error: the fundamental attribution error, where you think success is a result of your character, but failure is blamed on your circumstances. When you believe external factors cause your problems, you won’t sharpen your internal toolset to prevent them from reoccurring.

In truth, your GPA, SAT, or technical expertise alone won’t get you all the way to the finish line – so own the problems and find ways to improve from them, or else you’ll get passed by someone who does.

When an initiative doesn’t hit its targets, a product must be recalled, or a workplace accident occurs, who usually gets the blame? The person in charge, whether it’s the product manager or the CEO.

So, if you want to be a great leader, then start owning things now. Own the issue even when, “It’s not my fault,” because you won’t be responsible for something tomorrow if you don’t take responsibility for it today.

What do you think? Where have you seen talented people fall behind in the workplace?

AI and getting trapped inside the box

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New tools raise the bar on the need for creative thinking.

Geoff Wilson

A recent essay from AI Snake Oil (here) made a surprising claim: that artificial intelligence might slow down science. Not because it’s inaccurate, but because it’s too good at being accurate–within the wrong frame.

The author points to the centuries-long dominance of the geocentric model of the universe. At one point, predictions of planetary motion based on Earth being the center of the universe were astonishingly precise. But they were also deeply wrong. The math worked. The understanding didn’t.

The essay poses an unsettling idea: if AI had existed then–and been trained on those models–we might have clung to the wrong theory even longer. The system would optimize the pattern, not question the premise.

That idea should raise eyebrows in business, too.

Because if AI has the potential to reinforce flawed scientific models under the guise of precision, what could it do to our strategic and operational models in the business world? Could the efficiency of the tool blind us to the fragility of the box it lives in?

Let’s rewind to the 1990s.

Long-Term Capital Management (LTCM) was an elite hedge fund run by some of the most decorated minds in finance — including two Nobel Prize winners. Their trading strategy was based on elegant models, airtight math, and decades of data. They had accounted for everything — except what had never happened.

When the Asian financial crisis hit, and then the Russian debt default followed, the market behavior fell outside the box. LTCM’s models didn’t break–they simply didn’t apply. Within months, the fund teetered on the edge of collapse, threatening to drag the global financial system down with it.

That story wasn’t about incompetence. It was about conviction–conviction in a model that worked, until it didn’t. A belief in historical precision, at the cost of hypothetical imagination.

Which brings us back to AI.

Artificial intelligence excels at pattern recognition. It’s built to identify structure, predict based on precedent, and optimize for success–all within the observed dataset. But what happens when the next critical insight lives outside the dataset? Or when the market moves in a way it never has before? Or when a first-principles challenge is needed, not a predictive output?

What happens to outside-the-box thinking when the most powerful tools we use only look inside the box?

That’s not a knock on the technology. AI can enhance insight, increase productivity, and surface connections humans might miss. But it’s also a mirror–reflecting what’s been done, not necessarily what should be done next.

In that way, AI can become like the geocentric model: precise in the wrong direction.

Or like LTCM: confidently accelerating toward the edge of a cliff because the GPS has never seen a cliff before.

Strategic leaders–the real kind, the ones who hold the long arc of value creation and risk–can’t afford to outsource the act of questioning. AI can suggest. It can support. But it cannot wonder. It cannot imagine the inverse, the anomaly, the edge case that no one has seen but everyone should fear.

The job of leadership–now more than ever–is to ask: what if the model is wrong?

What if the future doesn’t look like the past?

What if we are right about everything, except the thing that matters most?

Outside-the-box thinking is not a luxury. It is, increasingly, the only kind of thinking that will matter. Because as the boxes get smarter, the need for human insight–uncomfortable, abstract, imperfect insight–only grows.

We should use AI. But we should also stay skeptical. Every model has a boundary. Every dataset has a blind spot. And every organization that overfits to efficiency risks underfitting to reality.

So yes, use the tool.

But keep one eye on the horizon–and one foot out of the box.

What do you think?  How do we keep a foot outside the box?

Michael Collins? Who’s That?

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The spotlight doesn’t reach everyone — but success does.

Geoff Wilson

I was swinging golf clubs with a younger professional recently — a sharp, curious guy early in his career. Somewhere around the 11th hole of virtual golf we faced a Par 5 and discussion of an “eagle” came up.  Since I had just chunked my umteenth shot of the game, I made an offhand comment: “I’m so far away from an eagle, you might as well call me Michael Collins.”

He laughed, politely. But then he asked, “Who’s Michael Collins?”

The question stopped me. Because while it was a reasonable question…it was telling.

Michael Collins, as you may or may not recall, was the third astronaut on Apollo 11. While Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin made history in the Eagle lander on the lunar surface, Collins stayed in orbit, piloting the command module (Columbia, for the record) solo for over 21 hours. He never touched the moon. Never took a famous step. Never delivered a line that would echo through time.

But without him, no one would have come home (coincidentally, the return trip from the moon started on July 21, 1969…exactly 56 years ago).

Collins–orbiting the moon as the loneliest human in the universe–was the one who kept the mission alive while the rest of the world watched the main event. He was critical, and yet largely forgotten.

The moment made me think about how often this happens in business, in leadership, in life.

We celebrate the keynote speaker, not the team that built the deck. We remember the CEO who closed the deal, not the analyst who first spotted the opportunity. We quote the founder, not the engineer who debugged the product the night before launch.

We tend to build monuments to moonwalkers. And we forget about the people who kept the orbit steady.

But if you’ve ever led anything big–a transformation, a turnaround, a product launch, a merger–you know that success is rarely the result of marquee moves alone. It’s the result of many people doing their job well, quietly, persistently, without fanfare. Often, without being asked.

Every great outcome has a few people whose names will never make it into the press release. But take one of them away, and the whole thing wobbles.

I’ve seen executive teams spend months on strategy–and then watched a mid-level operations lead execute the plan better than the leadership ever imagined. I’ve seen project managers, schedulers, executive assistants, even interns, step into chaos and bring order. And I’ve seen those same people go home at the end of the day, not looking for credit–just knowing they helped get it done.

These are the Michael Collinses of our organizations.

They don’t need a statue. But they do deserve recognition.

Leaders look for talent that shines. They also look for talent that supports. They understand that success is not only driven by visionaries, but by role players who turn vision into reality. They know that someone has to keep the engine running while others plant the flag.

And they make sure those people know they’re seen.

So here’s a simple challenge: look around your team. Ask yourself: Who is tending the command module? Who is holding the line while others step onto the stage? And what are you doing to celebrate them?

Because the truth is: Not everyone needs to walk on the moon.

Some people bring you home.

What do you think?  How do unsung heroes factor into your organization’s success?  How do you recognize them?

Recent disasters show the importance of keeping your head on a swivel

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Recent flooding disasters provide grim insight into the importance of remaining risk aware in life and work.

Geoff Wilson

First, an author’s note:  My heart aches for the lives lost and families forever changed by the recent flooding in Kerr County and across Central Texas. These reflections are not a critique of those who paid the ultimate price. They are offered with humility — a reminder that even as we grieve, we can reflect on the role of self-leadership when facing risk, uncertainty, and the unexpected.

Earlier this month, flash floods swept through Kerr County and neighboring parts of Texas. Rivers surged, bridges disappeared, and lives were lost — more than anyone even still yet knows, as recovery crews continue their efforts.

In the aftermath, the questions are surfacing. Could this have been prevented? Was there a breakdown in emergency response? Were there gaps in communication, in leadership, in planning?

Probably yes — to all of the above.

But even as we examine the failures in systems and structures, there’s a quieter, harder truth emerging: some of the deaths came down to risk decisions made at the individual level. Sleeping or camping near a river known for flash flooding. Ignoring the rumble of rain upstream. Trusting the past to be a guide for what the next night would bring. Or, importantly, thinking that somebody else would warn of major life-threatening risks.

It’s easy to point fingers when institutions fail. Harder to wrestle with the reality that self-leadership is the last line of defense. That no matter how well a system is designed — or how poorly — you are ultimately responsible for the risks you take with your own life, or with the lives of young people in your charge.

That’s not victim-blaming. It’s a recognition of agency. And it’s a principle that applies far beyond emergency response.

In organizational life, we often fool ourselves into thinking that risk is someone else’s job. We assume that someone — a finance lead, a risk officer, a committee, a consultant — is modeling the downside. Running the scenarios. Watching the flood gauges.

And then the waters rise.

When strategy falters, when markets shift, when the “one in a thousand” hits — the question isn’t who owned the spreadsheet. It’s who owned the decision. More often than not, the person who feels the full force of a risk realized is the same one who delegated the risk management in the first place.

There’s a lesson here. A call to self-leadership, even in the most structured organizations.

Keep your head on a swivel.

Look beyond the dashboard someone else built. Ask where the floodplain is. Know the signs upstream. And remember that just because a risk is being managed, doesn’t mean it’s being avoided.

This isn’t about paranoia. It’s about presence. Strategic leaders don’t live in a state of fear, but they do live in a state of alertness — especially in domains where the downside lands squarely on their shoulders.

If you’re going to sleep by a river — in Texas or in business — make it a conscious choice. Know the history. Understand the margins. Have a plan.

Because no matter how good the systems are around you, there’s no substitute for awareness.

And when the water starts to rise, you’ll want to be the one who saw it coming — not the one waiting for someone else to sound the alarm.

As of this writing, relief is still needed in the flood-ravaged areas.  WGP has made a donation to the Kerr County Flood Relief Fund, and I hope you will consider doing the same.  Here is a link.

What do you think?  Are there ways to keep your head on a swivel when it comes to business and career risk that deserve discussion?

Pain / Management

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The organizational flinch!

Geoff Wilson

This one comes from reflections over the past year I spent recovering from a total knee replacement.  The procedure and the recovery has been a revelation in not only the true miracles of modern orthopedic technology, but also the slow loss of function that we don’t even notice as we age.

Just two weeks ago, my wife and I hiked 65 miles along the Coast Path in Cornwall, England.  That would simply not have been possible for me a year ago.

For more than 20 years, I’ve dealt with the progressive degradation of a knee that I injured badly in 1996.  I’ve written about that injury and the learning that came with it in a prior blog post here.  The long degradation proceeded to a point last May where a simple 10-step stroll was a puzzle of pain and motion…and to a point where I experienced a prison of pain where sitting or lying still hurt as badly as moving. So, I have experience to share in my recovery from that: once the pain was gone, I had to re-learn how to move in ways my body had “blocked” over the past three decades.

I think there’s leadership learning in that process…

To wit: walk behind an older person in a grocery store and you might notice the pattern: the careful steps, the limited turns, the subtle guarding of motion. It’s not just age at play. It’s memory — the memory of pain. A stiff back, a knee that needs replacement like mine, a hip that talks back after a long day. Over time, the body learns to move around the pain. To manage it. And in managing it, it also limits itself.

What begins as protection becomes pattern. Eventually, the body isn’t moving to avoid pain — it’s simply not moving.

Organizations behave the same way.

Pain, in a business context, rarely arrives as a torn ligament. It comes as a failed initiative. A reorganization that went sideways. A strategy that fell flat. A leader who pushed too hard. An innovation that drained resources without results.

And like the aging body, the organization remembers.

People stop suggesting bold moves. Teams become careful. Risk assessments grow longer. Reviews grow heavier. The organization doesn’t say, “We can’t do this.” It says, “Let’s revisit that in Q4,” or “This feels like a distraction,” or the classic: “We tried something like this a few years ago…”

The organizational flinch is rarely loud. It’s quiet. Respectable. Even rational. But over time, it becomes rigid.

In physical therapy, clinicians often help patients relearn movements they’ve been avoiding — not because the body can’t do them, but because it’s been trained not to. The process is slow, deliberate, and occasionally uncomfortable. It requires the patient to trust the process — and the therapist to know when a movement is worth reintroducing.

Organizations need a similar kind of therapy.

Avoidance can’t be the long-term answer. Avoiding difficult conversations, complex initiatives, or once-burned strategic paths may feel prudent. But prudence can harden into paralysis. And agility — the ability to move, pivot, try, and adapt — fades.

This isn’t to say that pain should be ignored. Quite the opposite. Pain is a signal. It points to stress, imbalance, or real risk. But pain also presents a choice: recover and reengage, or protect and retreat. The latter feels safer in the short term. The former builds resilience over time.

Leaders must become attuned to their organization’s flinches. Not just the big ones — the failed product line or the ghost of a bad acquisition — but the smaller ones, too: ideas that never make it to the meeting, suggestions dismissed with a glance, initiatives that quietly die on the vine.

Ask: Where are we guarding movement? What pain are we protecting ourselves from? And is that protection still necessary?

Because over time, what we avoid becomes what we can no longer do.

And if we want to stay agile — as leaders, as teams, as organizations — we have to be willing to move through the pain. Thoughtfully. Carefully. But decisively.

What do you think?

In the new year, try better!

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What if we make 2024 the year of “better” instead of “best?”

Geoff Wilson

We are about to ring in the new year…again.

Everything is new.  It’s alive, glistening in its rebirth, and reimagined in its potential for perfection in 2024.

Right?     Right?       ???

Of course not.  If you are among the “executive class,”  you probably have just limped softly into a holiday season with more priorities than passion.  You’ve just spent the Christmas holiday at home or away in joy but with a low simmer of next year-itis starting to build.

If that is not an issue for you, then this is not the new year’s blog post for you.

This is the new year’s blog post for the grinders out there.  It’s for the people who look back on the year with confidence in accomplishment, sure, but also with knowledge of what didn’t get done.  And, it’s for the people who are nursing that minor stomach bubble of what needs to get done as the new year kicks off.

It’s for the entrepreneur who just spent the past two weeks trying to get back to working “on” the business vs. working “in” the business.  It’s for the finance executive who has been tying up loose ends for a calendar year fiscal close.  It’s for the operations executive who is in the throes of the holiday season where it seems like execution grinds to a halt for a portion of the team.

And, it’s for the professional who has been brought up on the fool’s gold of “optimizing.”  That’s the basic unit of unobtanium in complex systems that so many of us are chasing.

Yeah, this one’s for you.  Here it goes:

I grew up on “optimizing” and have slowly changed my tune and the tune of our professional work to softer tones of achieving “better” and “helping.”  Why?

Because optimizing is an ulcer.

Better is a celebration.

I’d rather celebrate.

Optimizing is a McKinsey-polished graph on a piece of paper that shows what’s “possible” (your mileage may vary, we accept no responsibility for your decisions based on our advice–all ulcers belong to you). It’s the financial model that nobody understands or even inspects. It’s the supermodel ideal.  It’s the private jet.

Better is a policy changed, a machine moved, a key hire made, a customer won, or a product launched that will all bring real-world results. It’s pencil and paper…working out the decision we will make today. It’s a spouse you love.  It’s a manual transmission in an old truck that still hauls your stuff.

In other words, better is the ability to take on a complex, often broken system (world, even) led and executed by complex, often broken people…and to eek out a few more happy customers.

It’s the avoidance of analysis paralysis.

It’s giving it a go.

It’s having at it.

It’s moving forward…even when you know you are limping.

Most importantly: It’s something to believe in.

And, so, I offer you this simple phrase:  In 2024, focus on better.

Happy New Year!

Geoff Wilson still looks to optimize way too much in life.  How about you?

Your bag, your gig, and theirs too!

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Want to be a great leader? Align what you like to do with what you have to do, and then find people who will follow the formula.

Geoff Wilson

Recently, I was part of a conversation about the abject drain it would be for me and other people around the table to perform the duties of the typical politician these days.

Be at the center of attention and stand, smile, shake hands, smile, stand, say something about the baby, stand, smile, shake hands, ask for the vote.  Rinse, repeat.

This is the stuff horror stories are made of for me. I would be terrible at it and would be terrible supporting it.

And that’s where the story turned.  I happen to be in the thick of Robert Caro’s biographical book series on Lyndon B. Johnson. In the midst of what I would characterize as a highly unflattering analysis of one of our country’s more enduring political figures, a thing stands out:  LBJ absolutely thrived on the gritty aspects of politics.  It gave him energy to see people, to give the same speech over and over and over in an era where taping wasn’t possible (talking about his early days), and to connive and scheme about how to buy votes and steal elections.

I’m not kidding or even exaggerating.  The guy was a machine.  And, it worked.  Further than that, he surrounded himself with acolytes who understood his drive and energy, and were just as committed.

LBJ without his team was just a disliked, lying blowhard who was literally nicknamed Bull (short for Bull****) in college.  LBJ with his team was a formidable presence in American politics for nearly five decades.

He did it by thriving on the dirty stuff that other people didn’t, and by building a team that did the same.

Yes, some people just absolutely thrive on what others of us view as drudgery, skullduggery, or even pain. And the ones who are great–even at dirty pursuits like politics–build teams with the same alignment.  And that’s maybe the gist of this post.

I’ve written before on how most people want to be great at something, but they are limited by lack of enjoyment for what it takes to be great. Want to be great at playing the guitar?  Best start to enjoy sore hands and bleeding fingers.  That post, Everybody wants to be a rockstar, got a lot of play years ago.  I’m going to take this one a step further to say it’s not only about you, it’s about the people around you, too.

A quote makes its way around the internet every now and then, attributed to a character on DRAGNET from many years ago:

Everybody has a bag. Everybody has a gig. When your bag and your gig jive, man thats groovy.

In other words, everyone has something they like to do, and everyone has something they get paid to do.  And when those two things are in alignment, life is good.

LBJ had a bag and a gig that jived.  Politics was his thing.

LBJ’s surrounded himself with people who bought into the same thing.

And that’s where you come in.  As an individual, you have to manage the tension between your bag and your gig.  If you really enjoy spending your time gardening but make money in accounting, you can survive and thrive but I know where your incremental effort is going…into the dirt.

If you really enjoy gardening and your life’s work is a garden center that serves the community, then, man, that’s like rocket fuel. You might find yourself sitting around at 6am writing silly blog posts about it.

As a builder of teams, you have to make the same analysis.  If the people on your team thrive on the success of the team, then you’re onto something.  If they thrive on the success of some other team or on their own individual success or hobbies, then you probably aren’t on your way to building a great team.

Align your bag and your gig, and then find people who share a similar alignment.

What do you think?  Is it possible not only to derive energy from the hard stuff for YOU, but to build a team with the same values?

 

When it comes to being great, the secret is in the dirt

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Is the secret to success really just about being willing to get into the dirt?

If you have spent more than a few minutes with me, then you likely have heard me chatter on about my passion for the game of golf dating back to when I started playing seriously twenty years ago.

In my experience in the professional world, I am often struck by how many of the lessons I’ve learned playing golf apply to the work I do on a day-to-day basis. One quote from the famously ornery golfer, Ben Hogan, sticks out to me the most when considering lessons learned. Someone once asked Hogan to explain what the secret to golf is and he curtly responded that

“the secret is in the dirt.”

At first glance, this statement seems like a vague piece of golfing jargon, but following a bit of deeper consideration, there are several valuable lessons to be gleaned from Hogan’s words that can be relevant for professionals in any field.

For me, the most important (and apparent) lesson from Hogan’s quote is the implied value of hard work, perseverance, and persistence. Like a golfer who spends countless hours on the range refining their swing, professionals in any field must be willing to put in the time and effort to improve their skills.

In business, this “digging of the dirt” may come in the form of working long hours to finalize a grueling contract negotiation, taking on an extra workstream that stretches your capabilities, or expanding your comfort zone through taking a public speaking course. These actions may feel like you are digging your way out of a never-ending hole, but when you’re able to reflect on them with some distance and perspective often prove to be the most instrumental in career advancement and growth.

Another important lesson I’ve taken from Hogan’s quote is the value in paying attention to the details.

In golf, a seemingly minor change to your angle of attack, grip pressure, or ball position can make an enormous difference in a shot’s outcome. What would appear to be two identical swings can result in vastly different results and it takes a trained eye to be able to detect the nuanced cause. Similarly, in business, small changes in a marketing strategy, product design, or updated process flow can produce an outsized impact on overall success. Things that make major differences are not always accompanied by major adjustments, so paying attention to the details in the dirt is vital.

For me, the secret in the dirt can be and can manifest as an innocuous second review of an upcoming presentation during which I find an embarrassing typo or as extreme as digging into a 40,000-line data set. The more I take the time to understand the details of an analysis or project, the better the outcome tends to be.

The “secret in the dirt” also represents the reality of failure and the fact that this can spur on future success.

High-performing professionals understand that failure is an essential part of the overall learning process and that it can provide valuable insight into what works and what doesn’t. By embracing failure and framing it as an opportunity to learn and grow, professionals can develop the resilience and perseverance necessary to achieve their goals. Tiger Woods, considered by many to be the best golfer ever, has only won 22% of the tournaments he has competed in; this means he fails in nearly 4 out of every 5 tournaments he enters. Keeping this winning percentage in mind helps me contextualize my own failures, whether that be an analysis that leads to no relevant insights or a working session which was not as productive as I hoped it would be. Realizing how to objectively assess the outcome, regroup, and internalize the lessons learned has been an important part of my professional development.

At its core, Ben Hogan’s secret in the dirt is that there is no secret in the dirt. Success requires hard work, persistence, the willingness to focus on fundamental details, and the value of failure. It is easy to believe that business lessons only come from education, books, or work experience, but I have learned just as much from unconventional sources (like a 70-year-old quote from a grumpy golfer).

Now it’s your turn: What secrets have you learned from digging it out of the dirt?

AI and the emergence of the centaur imperative for professionals everywhere

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If the future of knowledge work isn’t now…it isn’t too far off.

Geoff Wilson

We’ve seen a lot of press recently on the launch and adoption of OpenAI’s ChatGPT client.

Suddenly, you can ask for an essay on any commonly covered topic and it will be written, in the voice that you choose; and you can receive it in seconds.

Suddenly, you can ask for a summary of research on almost any topic that is commonly covered, and with a couple of iterations and refinements spanning minutes, you can get a fairly well-structured list of facts…in seconds.

Suddenly, you can ask for a limerick on a dog eating dog food in las vegas, and have it instantaneously.

Ok, so that last one is true, but maybe less useful.

This technology, basically a natural language-enabled interface with the publicly available knowledge in the world up to about 2021, represents a change, a threat, and a massive disruption to knowledge workers everywhere.

At WGP, we often discuss a hierarchy of professional capability that goes something like this:

  • Produce process:  Get clarity on the steps to take if you have nothing else.  This is the most basic professional function.
  • Produce data:  Gather the facts, get the numbers in place, and provide the foundation for analysis.  This is the next level of professional function.
  • Produce insight: Analyze the data and produce higher-level insights that range from the mundane to the blinding.  This is the expectation of good professionals of all sorts.
  • Produce synthesis: Combine insights, draw implications, and deliver orthogonal thinking that re-sets direction and creates truly new thinking.  This is professional nirvana.  When you find someone who does this well, cherish them.

If we think about the implications for professional services of AI tools like ChatGPT, it’s easy to see that suddenly machines have gone from repositories and accelerators of process, data, and insight generation approaches to a very viable resource (more than a tool) for actually generating these things.

I have never looked at MS Excel and said “create for me a 3-statement financial model structure” and had anything happen.  That has been the realm of analysts and experts.  AI tools are going to do this in no time (if not already).

I have never looked MS Project and said “create for me a basic project plan in 50 steps to deliver a market research report on the stick whittling industry.”  That has been the realm of consulting managers and associates.  AI tools are going to do this in no time (if not already).

Machines are quickly going to overtake people in generally acceptable process, data, and insight generation.

It wasn’t too long ago that these things were only done by people.  For years, consulting firms have silo’d and offshored research capabilities to low-cost countries.  For years, law firms have hired lower-cost labor for legal research.  These lower-level professional functions are unlikely to survive the evolution of AI resources.

So what’s the imperative?

We’ll explore it further in other posts, but I’ll summarize it as this:  The future average professional will have to have the skills of the best professionals today…that is, the ability to critically assess vast amounts of available information, to provide proprietary insight not generally available or acceptable, and to generate unconventional synthesis.  

This will be true across all legal, medical, consulting, and executive services.

The future professional will be a centaur:  The head of a powerfully insightful and resourceful human on the body of a powerfully informed AI resource that provides available world knowledge at fingertip reach.

The age of summarizing Bureau of Labor Statistics data and saying “AHA!” are over.  We are entering the age of professionals delivering on what most consulting firms claim they deliver on:  Proprietary, differentiated, confidential insights.  We are also entering the age of human interpretation of machine-driven insights.

In short, we’re entering the age of the centaur professional.  If you hire professionals, demand a centaur.  If you are a professional…time to upgrade.

What do you think?  How do you think AI resources will alter the way we work in the coming years?  What’s the right path to “best” in this new world?

I want (you) to believe

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Change management strategies are fundamental to strategy implementation.  How are you doing?

Geoff Wilson

Quick, think of a time that you made a really fundamental change in your life.  What did it take to do it?

Maybe you changed jobs or started a workout regiment.  Maybe you did something more drastic like ending a business or personal relationship.

Chances are, you made the change after thinking through the why, the what, and the how.  Chances are you didn’t make a fundamental change by leaping before you looked.

And, that’s the topic of this post.  Many of you who read this blog are leading change efforts.  You are hoping to implement new strategies (or retooled versions of old ones).  You are looking for fundamental change.

So, the question is this:  Have you looked before you leaped?  Have you set in place the fundamentals of change itself while seeking fundamental change?  The fundamentals of change can be characterized as the why, the what, the how, and the by how much…

In other words, if you want to establish change in your diet, you have to convince yourself that the change is worthwhile (the why), that you know what needs to change in your diet (the what), that you know how you will feed yourself differently (the how), and how that difference gets quantified (maybe in calories, or in hours of the day you are allowed to eat).

These four elements are essential to change, and to management of change.  All too often “strategic” leaders fundamentally understand all of these aspects of their desired changes, but forget that other people can’t see inside their heads.

This is where going from believing in a change to leading change actually happens.

Let’s say you want to install a new way of managing customer accounts.  You know that doing so will lead to higher sales, can be done via basic templates, will be reinforced through monthly reviews, and can be measured in terms of completion and sales impact.

Simple, right?

Except, when you jump directly to templates and reviews with your salesforce, your organization subtly rejects the change.  Why?  They don’t have all of the fundamental elements of beliefs.  You are feeding them the what and how, but not the why and how much, perhaps.

In our strategic planning and implementation practices at WGP, we think about strategy implementation as depending on tried and true methods of change management.  T’hey include:

  • A very strong narrative or story (the “why”),
  • A very clear outline and ideally role modeling of the change required (the “what”),
  • An understanding of the skills and tools required for change (the “how”),
  • And an understanding of how change will be measured and reinforced (the “how much”).

If I’m a leader who believes in a desired change, I’ve convinced an important stakeholder–me.  The difference is I want you to believe.   No…I really need you to believe.

What do you think?  Are you using fundamental change management tools to drive your organization’s strategic change?