The You Project: Beginning, Middle, End

Confucius said that we have two lives, and the second one starts when we realise we only have one.

You wanted to lead for a reason, so what is it that you really want to achieve while you have the chance? And is what’s stopping you out there beyond your control, or is it within you?

What's the issue?

1. Life is finite.
   
   [N.B. Now, when I say that, please don’t imagine me sitting in the lotus position (I can’t) under a tree, talking slowly (I don’t) in soft tones (nope). I cut my leadership teeth in factories and warehouses, solving problems like providing toilets for truckers who for safety reasons insisted on parking overnight outside our regional distribution centre in a residential area of Moscow.]
   
   But like a project, your career has had a start, you’re somewhere in the middle, and at some point it will end (even Warren Buffet’s retiring this year).
   
2. It’s easy to be consumed by the demands of what’s shouting loudest in your life, which is entirely understandable given the effort required just to keep up, let alone get ahead. But that M.O. tends to drop your head from your true horizon, the sum of your ambition and purpose, which lies beyond the strategy du jour. In other words, you think you’re thinking about the big picture, but just double-check that.
   
3. Leadership is a deliberate act. This was your decision. You could have stayed as an HR specialist or a forensic accountant or loss adjuster, but you wanted to become the leader of those roles. The power of leadership though - and what it can achieve through others - can be so daunting that people are often afraid to truly wield it. And there are lots of cultural and political and risk factors encouraging you to protect rather than push your boundaries.
   
4. Based on my experience of working with leaders at all levels around the globe, the odds are high that you’re playing the game well away from the edge of your capabilities. Slow and steady doesn’t win the race, it just uses up the only commodity you can’t buy back.

Consider this

1. Your life is dictated by deadlines, but have you included amongst them the biggest deadline of them all – beyond which there are no more deadlines? And by the time you get to the end of your career, what is it that you want to have achieved? Or are you just drifting, one budget cycle at a time?
   
2. When you realise that your time as a leader is not infinite, it can give you the courage to step things up a gear and help you clarify what it is that you want. The great thing about being a leader is that you have all these people around you to help make it happen, for you and for them.
   
3. You’re a senior leader, and you got here by meeting difficult deadlines. But who decided on your current rate of progress? What if you were told you had to go faster now? What if you told them that they had to go faster to keep up with you now?
   
4. Before you get anyone else to up their game, up yours (be more careful in how you read that than how I wrote it...). That's why it's called leading.

Try this

1. Write down three things you really want to achieve in your career (however you define that). If you’re afraid to tell anyone about them because they’re so ‘out there’, then that’s a good sign they’re the right calibre. I do take my own advice, and I know mine.
   
2. Now imagine that you’ve only got [insert whatever number you want here, because it’s finite] years to make them happen.
   
3. Go.