MME #02: The Shorter Road To Freedom As A Manager
Monday Morning Manager
Read time: < 4 minutes
Roughly 27 yeas ago, I went to one of the now famous Jay Abraham eX Factor Programme Workshops. Even then, Jay was one of the world's top marketers and was credited with making more than $40bn for his clients in the preceding 10 years.
At the time I was working 90+ hour weeks in my senior board level management job, the pay was good, and life was comfortable, but I was well along the road to burnout.
Jay's workshop was a mind blowing extravaganza of long hours, powerful life and career changing activities. It had astoundingly good workshop leaders including Michael Basch, then CEO of FedEx.
Jay's perspective hit me for 6. He talked about, and I paraphrase:
"Ieverage your contribution rather than your time to increase your value in the market place
He showed us that, "Instead of using a single amount of time to make one contribution, you can use a single amount of time to make multiple contributions. So simple yet so powerful"
Thank you to the life changing and still amazing - Jay Abraham
As a manager I started to really think about how I could use my contribution rather than my time to my advantage.
I'm not a marketer or a sales manager whose results are really direct and easy to see. But, I do have deep knowledge of being a manager at all levels from the front line, all the way into the Board that would be useful to others.
This realisation took me on a long and winding path as I built my value, increased my income, and achieved my true freedom as a manager. Finally I had become my own manager.
The Shock of What The Future Holds For Managers
My very first job as a manager, quite a few years before Jay's workshop, had been to make 200 middle and senior executives voluntarily redundant. Then I was responsible for making the 800 or so consequential moves necessary to get the vacancies into the right places.
The Board had expected the demand for voluntary redundancy to be really low. To our amazement, as soon as soon as the modest offer was opened, it was booked fully with requests overnight. After Jay's workshop I went back and interviewed as many of the 200 as I could find The stories they told about their dissatisfaction that led to them wanting to leave were all very similar. Their life sequences went something like this:
They stepped up to their first manager job
... worked hard to make an impression - 40-60 hours per week
... studied hard, in their own time to go further
... got promoted and worked longer hours to maintain their reputation - 50-70 hours per week
... got promoted again and worked even more more hours - 60-90 hours per week
.... adjusted their life to match their salary
.... kept going, finding it harder and harder to make an impression - "I started thinking about work all the time"
... became more dissatisfied with their work
...eventually became bitter and disillusioned, some gradually got demoted
Their Joi de vivre 'left their building', often taking their health with it.
They retired and got really sick and/or dead within a few years of retirement
All that work for the little bit of freedom they had at the end - No Thanks
These stories were so confronting I set about actively looking for a better solution.
First off all, I got in touch with the only two managers who had offered a different life story. I interviewed them through my new lens of what was possible. Jay's thoughts had served as the guide to value and freedom creation I needed to get started on my seach.
Rules For The Road Ahead
To begin creating more value on my road to freedom as a manager, I needed to give myself permission to try many new things. If you're anything like me confidence to try new things needs to be rooted in my own proof of effectiveness.
There are 3 very simple ground rules that helped me build my new approach
If a new thing does what it's meant to do, every time out, in any environment in which it has application, only then will I invest in it. Only then can I really trust it.
Amazing amounts of creativity and innovation still have a massive part to play, but they must be really helped by new activities established to get important things done and delivered. Value delivery in the shortest and best possible way must be assured.
Measuring the actual and factual results is the key to accurate feedback - "the meaning of thing is given by the movement of what happens next" Ron Hull - Artist and Realiser and great friend.
Once I was armed with these simple ground rules I knew 'if it's to be it's up to me" A insight given by Brian Tracy - another great teacher along the way.
I started to think about the Keys to Success I would need in place to give myself a high likelihood of success.
The 6 New Keys To Success
To start outlining the enablers that I would need to successfully travel my road to freedom as a manager, I invested many days weeks and months - thinking, researching, talking with colleague managers, finding and listening to teachers, testing and proving the replicability of ideas.
This is the list I came up with after a great deal of thinking, researching, talking with colleagues and real world testing and proving .
To truly shorten your road to freedom, you will need to:
Key #1: Be Your Own Change Agent - for you, for other people, for the situations you will find yourself in. Realising this, was helped greatly by the fact I have been trained as a professional change agent. It had greatly unlocked my potential and I had worked with hundreds of managers to help them move forward. Sharing the change agent skills seemed an imperative so I put together, validated and normed a Change Agent Self Assessment Instrument to enable managers to check their capabilities in relation to their:
Self Mastery
Social Mastery
Situational Mastery
It continues to be a really useful tool for managers to this day. You can access it here
Key #2: Have a System to Deliver Better Results More Quickly to free out your time. This became 10 years work. I worked with thousands of managers. I sought out the stories of the top performing. I found every manager I could who had increased their value, used it to drive up their income, and enjoyed much more freedom and a great reputation for delivering outstanding results.
What I found was different people each describer different parts of a bigger system - it took time and patience to pull it all together. I spent years proving the system worked in every different situation I could find, with managers at every level. Once I knew I had a system that could replicate results for managers and their organisations, I formed a consultancy which I ran for 25 years. More recently I evolved the digital version of The Regenesis Operating System for Managers - coming soon. If you're interested in being an early adopter click here - I'lll add you to the wait list.
Key #3: Measure Your Value - the contribution you expect to create before you intervene, and the actual value you have created once you've intervened - and use it to create your rewards. In 2008 at the height of the last economic downturn I worked with the world's best human capital analytics provider. From this came the 6 level ROI model I use to this day. Click here to view it.
Key #4: Open The Doors To Your Learning and Creativity - so you can adapt and adopt any new idea you come into contact with, in any situation where it may have application. Massively increases your agility and productivity.
Key #5: Grow Yourself With and Through Others - show what you know to other managers - be the spark of their greater contribution, value, and freedom. The multiplication of your learning that cnmes from doing thi will propel you forward.
Key #6: Create Your Legacy - Give back - enable others to create contribution, value and freedom for themselves and others - it is better to gain a little from a lot of people than to have a lot from a few. Your life and work does matter. How will you let others stand on your shoulders?
In Summary
Every manager has a different opinion on how their work and life should play out, what's important, and what isn't.
If you are following the regular path behind the many managers that have gone before, there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. This is the choice you make for the level of freedom you want.
If you're open to a new way forward as a manager, I highly recommend you consider the advice from, Jay, from my own experience, and from others who have gained their freedom.
The recent events that have rocked people's world in 2020, 2021, and today give us all reasons for profound change.
My 6 Keys to Success:
Be Your Own Change Agent
Have a System to Deliver Better Results More Quickly
Measure Your Value
Open The Doors To Your Learning and Creativity
Grow Yourself With and Through Others
Create Your Legacy
If you enjoyed this post and want to learn more about creating more value and freedom for yourself as a manager , you can read my free advice here.
See you again next week.
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